FORMER Pirates star and world title chaser Leon Madsen insisted returning to a big crowd in Britain “brings something special out of you” as he looks for another Speedway GP success in Cardiff this weekend.

The 33-year-old Dane, who did a season-and-a-half with Poole between 2009 and 2010, is looking to make it a double of wins in the showpiece of British speedway on Saturday.

Madsen claimed an emotional victory at Principality Stadium last time out in 2019, seeing off Emil Sayfutdinov, Bartosz Zmarzlik and another ex-Pirate in Jason Doyle in the finale.

Currently second behind Zmarzlik in the Grand Prix standings, Madsen is excited to create more memories in Wales once again.

“I am very much looking forward to being back in Cardiff,” he told the Daily Echo.

“It just brings something special out of you when you wake up in the morning and you know where you are going to race in the evening in front of 50,000 people in the stands.

“The whole atmosphere building up to the event is unbelievable and I really love to be part of.

“The fact that this meeting is so big. It’s just so special and also, when I have good memories from those events – like Warsaw and Cardiff - I feel very confident and I have a high belief in myself that going into this meeting I will do good.

“We would like to race in those meetings every time we do the GPs! But Cardiff and Warsaw, they are the two biggest events in the calendar at the moment.

“It’s something we as riders, we are really looking forward to. The presentation, the hype and build-up before, when we are getting presented to all the fans, it’s really something different.

“We probably don’t feel it that much as everybody else does because we are so focused about the meeting. We don’t really pay that much attention to there being 50,000 compared to another GP meeting, where there might be 10,000 or something.

“But after the meeting you really take a moment to see everything that you’ve just been doing and that’s when you really understand what’s been going on.”

Former Pirates Doyle, Maciej Janowski, Jack Holder and Adam Ellis are also set to line up at the event.

The Daily Echo will be on hand to provide live coverage from the event.

Coverage of the UK round of the Speedway Grand Prix World Championship in Cardiff starts at 4.30pm on Saturday. Watch all the drama exclusively live on discovery+ and Eurosport 2