SWINDON'S world champion Jason Doyle now knows the full list of riders who will be trying to wrest the title from him in 2018.

The top eight who have qualified for the series by right from the 2017 campaign are: Doyle (Australia), Patryk Dudek (Poland), Tai Woffinden (Great Britain), Maciej Janowski (Poland), Bartosz Zmarzlik (Poland), Emil Sayfutdinov (Russia), Matej Zagar (Slovenia), and Fredrik Lindgren (Sweden).

Four other riders – Martin Vaculik (Slovakia), Chris Holder (Australia), Greg Hancock (USA) and Nicki Pedersen (Denmark) – have also been nominated.

Hancock and Pedersen suffered injuries this year which hampered their scores.

The following qualified from the knock out stages: Przemyslaw Pawlicki (Poland), Artem Laguta (Russia) and Craig Cook (Great Britain).

It will be interesting to see how Cook gets on. He missed the last few meetings of the season allegedly with depression and has little continental experience. He has, however, stated that he will not ride in Britain’s second tier in 2018 but has signed a contract with Rybnik who were unluckily relegated to the Polish Division One.

Jason Doyle has been named 2017 winner of the World Speedway Riders Association Rider of the Year award.

Their annual awards dinner was held at the weekend but Doyle is still in Australia so the award was presented to him at the Australian GP.

In other news Doyle raced in a couple of Australian meetings a week or so after clinching his title in Melbourne.

In Adelaide, Doyle was joined by fellow Robin Nick Morris and former Swindon rider Rohan Tungate in the Jack Young Cup, which doubled up as a fundraiser for the 2018 Australian World Cup squad whose funding has been severely cut.

However, Doyle, who had been ill all day, did not take his place in the final which was won by Tungate from Morris.

Twenty four hours later the three clashed again some 250 miles down the road at Mildura for the Phil Crump Trophy.

The bug that affected him in Adelaide was still troubling him but Doyle still scored a maximum in qualifying and had the fastest time of the night before withdrawing from the final which again saw Tungate win from Morris, with another 2016 Robin, Justin Sedgmen, suffering engine problems in the six-man final.

One sad note is that 21-year-old Liam Carr, the Robins' guest rider who secured a vital if unexpected win in heat two of the first leg of the grand final, has retired from the sport.

He suffered a difficult season, being initially dropped by Berwick, but as he showed at Blunsdon the talent did seem to be there.