Dent Oliver
British speedway rider
John Walter Denton Oliver (13 April 1918 – 15 December 1973) was an international motorcycle speedway rider who qualified for the Speedway World Championship finals three times. He earned 19 international caps for the England national speedway team.
Career
Oliver started speedway in 1945 and received guidance and support from pre-war rider Bob Harrison. In 1946, he joined the Belle Vue Aces. After an impressive first two seasons, he was called up to race for England in the 1947-1948 Ashes Test series in Australia.
In 1949, Oliver reached the first of his three World Final appearances, but in 1951 he announced his retirement. Later that year, he was persuaded into riding again by the Bradford Tudors, on a £300 loan from Belle Vue. Belle Vue re-signed him at the start of 1952, but he later rejoined the Tudors and remained there until he retired in 1954. He briefly came out of retirement in 1956 to ride nine meetings for the Tudors before retiring again.
In 1963, at the age of 45, Oliver returned to racing with the Sheffield Tigers in the Provincial League following a call from Frank Varey.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5259378. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1918, 1973, 1945 and 1946.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dent Oliver” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.