LIGHT SPEED
MANCHESTER’S DECISION TO BUILD A VELODROME TO PROVE IT WAS SERIOUS ABOUT BECOMING AN OLYMPIC PROSPECT DIDN’T CONVINCE ANYONE. BUT IT DID PROVIDE A LAUNCH PAD FOR GLOBAL DOMINATION. IF BRITISH TRACK CYCLING HAS TAKEN THE SPORT INTO THE SPACE AGE, THIS IS ITS CAPE CANAVERAL
TEXT NEIL SQUIRES
PHOTOS CORBIS
The north-west has always had a strong cycling tradition, but the construction of the £10m Manchester Velodrome in 1994 (coinciding with the opening of the Lottery funding tap) ushered in a new golden age. Riders such as Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton have become household names, winning medal upon medal in major championships. The honours include seven golds out of a possible 10 at the Beijing Olympics – an incredible hit rate which helped Britain to fourth place in the medals table – and nine at the UCI World Championships in Manchester in 2008. As preparations continue for London 2012, the Olympic torch is being carried for Britain on two wheels.
The British have always enjoyed their sport with spokes. As far back as 1869, velocipede races were being held at London’s Crystal Palace, and track cycling began to catch on soon after. Big crowds were attracted to the new banked arenas which sprung up, including the French artist Toulouse - Lautrec, who crossed the Channel to see what all the fuss was about. He might have struggled to reach the pedals himself, but he was an avid cycling fan who used Catford Cycle Track as a backdrop for some of his sketches.
Some of the early tracks were constructed from loose shale, meaning riders used to slide, speedway-style, around the bends, but gradually these were replaced with wooden boards, increasing speeds and ensuring fewer riders looked like they had just received 40 lashes after a spill.
It was fast and furious viewing for the spectators, and the promoters cashed in. Unlike road racing, track cycling offered a captive audience who could be charged admission prices, and throughout the 1920s and 1930s cycling events regularly pulled in more than 10,000 people.
Interest dwindled post-War and one by one the velodromes fel l into disrepair but on the back of recent British success, the good timesa back and Manchester is at its heart of it. The city is the home Team GB and its velodrome the hi-tech nerve-centre ofth 120-man medal machine which spits out gold like bas ball pitchers do chewing tobacco. Not eventh cycling-obsessed French have anything match it.
“The velodrome is a world class facility. It was a reall important factor inm decision to tak this job sai.
Interest dwindled after World War II, and one by one the velodromes fell into disrepair, but due to recent British success things are changing, and Manchester is at the forefront of the movement. The city is home to Team GB, and the velodrome is the hi-tech nerve centre of this 120-man medal machine. Not even the cycling-obsessed French have anything to match it.
“The velodrome is a world-class facility. It was a really important factor in my decision to take this job,” says British Cycling’s visionary performance director Dave Brailsford, the BBC’s coach of the year.
“Space has become a problem – we are bursting at the seams – but there are great advantages to having everything under the same roof. It allows me to deal with any issues the coaches and the support staff may have face to face so things aren’t allowed to fester, and the track we have is fantastic. It was under-employed before, but it is now the most used track in the world, which is a very positive thing for Manchester. This is actually the second track we’ve had, which shows how much use it gets.”
The 2007 refit, with larch wood specially imported from Siberia, means the super-slick surface, which has delivered more than 15 world records (including Chris Boardman’s second and third breakings of the hour record in 1996 and 2000), has been restored to its best for a busy season ahead. It begins at the end of July with the European Masters Track Championships, followed by the UCI Track World Cup Classics and the National Championships in the autumn when the fast-paced Revolution Series will be up and running again.
There were sell-out crowds for the series last year, which features more than 20 races in one evening. The appeal is based around accessibility, something that’s interwoven into the fabric of cycling. For around £30, an entire family can see Hoy or Pendleton whizz past at almost 50 miles an hour a few feet away and then minutes later be mixing with them. The contrast with the Premiership football club across the road is stark. “At Manchester City FC you can’t bring along a football and have a kickabout on the pitch,” says the velodrome’s cycling manager, Bob Barber.
Joe and Joanne Public are welcome to sample the track at taster sessions, which involve basic training and an hour in the saddle, a white-knuckle ride that costs under £10 including bike hire. In 1996, two years after the track opened, a young Lancastrian called Jason Queally decided to have a go. It fired his imagination and four years later he was an Olympic champion.
Track cycling has an advantage over road racing for the enthusiastic amateur because it doesn’t involve being blown off the tarmac and into a hedge by the backdraft from an articulated lorry. Nor does it require lungs that run especially well on traffic fumes.
What it does require is balance and bottle. The banking on the 250m-long track reaches a vertiginous 42 degrees in the middle and there are no brakes.
As the beginners wobble and lurch like new-born foals, a state-of-the-art sports science operation is whirring smoothly under the same roof for the elite riders. If British track cycling has taken the sport into the space age, Manchester Velodrome has been its Cape Canaveral.
In his eight years at the top of British Cycling, Brailsford has assembled an army of physiotherapists, psychologists and dieticians, and a level of technical back-up more suited to a Formula One team than a musty bike-repair shop.
Inside mission control the team is working on an ambitious new project – an attempt to extend the dominance of British cycling still further. The quest is simple. To deliver a British team and rider that wins the Tour de France.
“It is a project which complements our Olympic programme and a challenge which really excites me,” says Brailsford. “Let’s try to win the Tour de France with a British rider. Clean.” The latter point is a telling one. When the British team enters the Tour next July – the proximity of this year’s pageant does not allow sufficient preparation time – it will be heading into a viper’s nest of controversy.
The physical demands of the 2,175-mile course tests competitors to their limits, and the Tour’s history is littered with drug scandals. Yorkshireman Tommy Simpson died in the saddle while competing under the influence of amphetamines in 1967.
Entire medicine cabinets have been emptied into Tour de France riders over the years to help them through the pain, with strychnine and heroin giving way to steroids and more sophisticated designer drugs such as EPO in recent times.
By contrast, track cycling has a relatively good reputation, although Rob Hayles, one of the current British team, was withdrawn from this year’s World Championships after an abnormal blood test. Hayles was subsequently reinstated after being cleared of blood doping – the process by which blood that’s rich in red blood cells is taken from an athlete and later re-injected to improve their aerobic performance and endurance.
Brailsford is adamant the Tour dream will not prove a distraction in the run-up to 2012. There were accusations that the team’s attention wavered before the Pruszków World Championships, where it only won two golds, but he points to the absence of stars such as Hoy, Bradley Wiggins and Rebecca Romero.
“We plan our programme according to the Olympic calendar, not what is happening in the current year,” says Brailsford. “The first 12 months after the Olympics allows time for a bit of experimentation and the key thing is to make sure that the riders are given exposure. Young riders need to gain experience in world championships if they are going to win medals in the Olympics.”
By 2012, a gleaming new velodrome will be up and running in London.
After the games, there will be pressure for this facility to become the base of British cycling, but Brailsford wants Manchester, which has been such an integral part of the British success story, to remain the heart of the operation. “A lot depends on the support of Manchester Council,” he says, “but I’d like to think it will be. It is our home.”
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