Thoughts on an Ottawa Velodrome

The recent announcement of a velodrome initiative in Ottawa has me pretty excited.  And not just because I have a bet on how long it will be before everyone in the city has Stevens Arenas and Mavic Io’s for Friday Night Racing.

I predict this will be a hot look in Ottawa fashion for 2015

A big percentage of the time I’ve spent racing bicycles has been on a track bike.  The first time I raced track was on a borrowed steel bike in 1999.  One of my dad’s students lent me a steel framed track bike (back then they were all steel frames) he’d brought back from Australia and my dad and I drove down to the Win-Del Velodrome – a 250m asphalt track in Delhi Ontario.  Later that summer the Ontario Team took a bunch of us up to Bromont to race on the outdoor 200m track there.  That track had started life indoors as a 160m track in Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, when they moved it to Bromont they just lengthened the straightaways by 20m a side. It would later be moved to Quebec City, where it eventually fell into disrepair.  The jump from what was essentially a paved depression in a field to the steep wood walls of Bromont was slightly nerve-wracking to say the least!

One of the big attractions to moving to Victoria was that they had a then international level 333m outdoor concrete velodrome.  To this day this remains one of my favourite tracks in the world.

Since then I’ve raced and trained on tracks in: Australia (I raced on 6), Trinidad (4), Portland, Calgary, Washington, Bromont (a different one), London ON, Detroit, and Burnaby (which became my home track for a number of years).  I also fluked my way through grad school by writing a thesis that directly related to building large scale sports facilities.

I thought I would jot down some of my initial throughts on things the Ottawa cycling community might want to keep in mind going forwards:

1)      What type of track do you want?

Obviously this is the first and primary question any potential velodrome builders should be asking themselves.  I’ve written before here, and on Pedal, that chasing World Cups is a fruitless and potentially undermining activity (also it is now redundant since there will be a World Class facility in Milton).  So the obvious answer is that Ottawa should build a cost-effective facility to be used by grass roots, provincial and potentially national level competitions, as well as providing a suitable training venue for athletes developing up to the international level (keep in mind that Burnaby proved a suitable training venue for 2 of the 3 Canadian Olympians in LA prior to things being based in LA).  Because of the Ottawa climate the track should also be indoors to maximize its impact and usage.

2)      Length matters.  But don’t forget about width.

Someone will get upset when I say this but: Don’t Build another Forest City.   That track is a fantastic model of a group that came together, championed by the incredibly passionate Rob Good, and built a great training and racing facility on a shoe string budget with vision and passion.  However the basic design of the track leaves a lot of things wanting.

While it is too short to be an ideal racing and training surface it is also too narrow – a variable that is probably as significant. The plethoras of crashes that plague that track are largely the result of a narrow racing surface that gives racers few options to escape tumbles.  Crashing is a reality of racing bikes in general, and racing track in particular, but they seem to happen with far more frequency than is usual at Forest City.  I’ve seen an ambulance called to a track meet maybe a half a dozen times in all the years I’ve raced track- three of these have been on the three occasions I raced at FCV.

Burnaby has considerably better dimensions, both in length and width and in general design.  While shorter than an international standard 250m the design of Burnaby means that it rides exactly the same way- without the awful transitions from too-flat straightaway to banking that defines London. (Alpenrose in Portland has similar issues- however that track is longer negating some of the effects).  Allegedly Burnaby is modeled on the Rotterdam Track- and it is a design worth emulating.

Another key advantage of the extra 60 odd meters is that it allows for more riders to be up on the track at one time.  Any track will need active programming to survive; the ability to have an extra 5 riders in any learn-to-ride or training group can make a big difference to the bottom line over time.

A two-hundred meter track could be the ideal length as it is large enough to host national and provincial level competitions on, small enough to emphasize technique while large enough to provide a proper training surface (read: you can motor pace on it).  If we have the room by all means build a 250m track but a 200m can work just as well.  Any shorter and you being to make serious trade offs.

Look how much fun everyone can have chasing

after a Welshman on a beachcruiser!

3)      Put money aside for stormy weather.  You’ll need it.

Any fundraising for the track should simultaneously be looking to create an operating/incidental fund for after the track is turned on.  Once the lights go on a facility like a track is likely to be running a narrow budget to keep its books balanced.  Such a fund could potentially be a life-saver for such an operation.  It will also be far harder to the board to find time to think strategically and fundraising once the whirling dervish of daily operations begins.

Random shot of me looking glued at the 6 Day in 2008.

Mike Friedman looks nervous.

4)      It needs to be a turn key operation

As I just mentioned, the financial viability of the project will be tested right out of the gate.  As a result the board needs to make sure that programming is lined up from day one as soon at the lights turn on.  This means having a plan to bring riders up to speed through learn-to-ride programs, as well as having a pool of riders that have already been exposed to the track and basics of events.  Thankfully the Ottawa Bicycle Club has done an excellent job in recent years in taking down van loads of kids to ride the track in London (see I told you I thought they were doing an awesome job of something).

5) Grass Track

Building on Point #4- Another great way to introduce more people in Ottawa to track racing in advance of the launch of a proper velodrome is a simple, low tech and (pun-intended) grassroots option.

 Turns out some of the Brits success has to do with lots of kids having fun on track bikes. 

Who'd have thunk.

Building up this user base before we build a track will help make the track viable once it’s built.

Before she was on Strickly Come Dancing she came up grass track racing. 

Oh yeah and won a boatload of World and Olympic Titles in between.

Up Next:

Field of Dreams: Grass Track Racing in the National Capital.

Lizzie speaks truth.

"The first feedback we got later was that the UCI is investing in women's cycling by making the team pursuit a race for four riders. When that came out I thought: 'This is an absolute joke. There's no investment in women's road cycling – who is that helping? One more person in the team pursuit?' That's great for the Australian, New Zealand and British track teams but no one else."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/nov/30/lizzie-armistead-marianne-vos-united