Youth Racing at Nationals:

 A Modest Proposal*

*Don’t worry, no one is getting eaten. Also there are actually two proposals.

So the topic of youth racing is one I touched on back around cross nationals when there was a bit of a tizzy about having a cadet or U17 event at nationals (Which were held as recently as 2002).  The proponents argued that these races are needed, that the kids are old enough, that it would motivate them, that Holland does it, ect.  I've been meaning to go off on a half-cocked rant about it ever since, and here it is.

Cyclling skills are transferable.

Sadly Voss level talent, not so much.

While some of these arguments are valid, others are just the product of impatient parents who can’t wait for their little Cav or Vos to bust out and dominate.   Given the geographic realities of Canada versus many other cycling nations the truth is we can’t just try and imitate what other countries do just hope it sort of works out.  The truth is young racers benifit more from having plentiful and affordable grass roots racing available to them than they do having a single one shot deal called Nationals (with no outcome for these age groups I would add- there are no cadet worlds, or national team projects ect).

 If this guy hadn't wasted his youth riding mountain bikes

 he might have won a Grand Tour one day.

Attending any national championships for a U17 is an expensive endeavour for any kids that are not from the host region- so in the past these championships have tended to have very few riders from out of province, and the result is they end up being regional events anyways.  Road and track at least feature multiple days but for MTB and cross Nationals are generally a one shot deal (though some cadets certainly race both DH and XC- Geoff Kabush for example).

One way to change this is to create more value for the racers who attend Nationals by changing the nature of the event. This includes road nationals as there is currently talk of adding U17 events.

Instead of having a shorter, but otherwise carbon copy of the senior events,  instead we could create something different and more development focussed.  I have two largely similar proposals.

1)      Hold Discipline Specific Talent ID Camps after Nationals

MTB and Track lend themselves well to this, simply invite most of, if not all of the cadets (depending on field size) to attend a 3-4 day training camp after the racing is over at the venue that held the event.  This camp could focus on skills and developing proper training habits, as well as give CCA coaches a chance to see the riders coming up the development system from across the country.  Often time there isn't a lot of time in a season to focus on core skills- like team pursuit exchanges or madison fundamentals (or whatever it is mountain bikers do...).  This would be an ideal opportunity for this.

Additionally being on the back end of nationals it should be possible to get some of the top senior riders to stay and mentor the camp- what could be more exiting for young riders than training both with their peers but also with their heroes?

Mentorship matters.
Also I am now apprantly recyling pics.

2)      Cadet All-Stars Camps

My other option, and in many ways my preference, would be to host one or even two “Cadet All-Star Camps.”  These would require some coordination with the provinces, but the idea would be for a week long multi-discipline camp in August.  Riders would qualify via their provincial series (giving them additional goals for the year) and 8 or so riders (4 boys/4girls) would be nominated by their respective provinces.

The camps would ideally be help somewhere like Victoria or Bromont where there is access to mountain biking, good road riding and a velodrome, and over the week riders would be exposed to all three.  At the U17 age group the riders need not be specialised on just one discipline and this type of environment will help expose kids to other avenues of cycling (that might suit some better than what they currently know).

Somewhere right now the next Curt Harnett might be flailing around on a mountain bike

thinking he sucks at climbing.

While the camps could feature mini-races (such as mid-week track or mountain bike races) part of the goal of these camps would be the chance for riders to meet their counterparts from across the country – something that is important if in future years many of these same kids will race on National Teams together in a far more pressure-cooker environment.

In my mind one of the advantages of this camp is the chance to both cost share between the CCA and the provincial federations (as a side benefit this would help integrate these two levels of organisation). While presumably the athletes would still pay much of their own costs- just as they would have to attend nationals- they are now getting far more value for the trip.  Depending on the number of potential athletes and costs, it might be preferable to hold two Camps- an East and a West camp.

Kids won't know how much fun other disciplines are if they don't get the chance to find out!

Such a camp gives coaches more chances to see athletes from across the country at an early stage of development than just a single race. It also gives provincial staff a better idea of how their system compared to otehr provinces. 

The athletes have increased learning opportunities in quality training and racing habits to take with them as they move up the LTAD.  While making a four rider team from Quebec will doubtlessly be harder than making a four rider team from PEI, the riders from PEI also stand to gain the most as they will have had less exposure to high level racing than their Quebec, Ontario or BC peers.

Oh yeah, and it would be a whole lot of fun.

Johnny T knew how to have fun.  And win on the road, xc, dh and bmx bike. 

Oh and he had timeless fashion sense as well.

Why do we devalue our own events?

The Importance of Nationals                       

So this blog idea has been ruminating in my mind for a few years now, but at its crux it’s about the intersection of development, opportunities and our own domestic evens- specifically Nationals.

A few years ago when there was the potential for a Men’s National Pursuit program the powers that be began entering composite national teams in the team pursuit at nationals.  Now the event was never super deep to begin with in Canada, often struggling to put together 4-5 teams, but this move effectively killed the event.  This is too bad because for a lot of racers it was pretty much their only chance to be exposed to team pursuit, and it is doubly true for juniors.  I thought it was an odd choice at the time, and it didn’t exactly sit easy with me, but I also figured at the time I was too close to the subject matter to be effective as I was still quasi-racing.

Flash forwards a year or so and I am reading in a number of mainstream news articles about how Heather Moyse, a very successful Canadian rugby player is going to try and make her third national team.  This was quickly followed by Moyse complaining bitterly to the media about how she wasn’t given a chance to race World Cups.  She did eventually get to go to Pan-Ams where in all fairness to Moyse she rode commendably well given her lack of experience.  She commented; “I had never raced head-to-head with someone else on a track before, something that requires handling skills and strategy.”

More time was spend on photo ops than racing.

Her entitlement grated me, as did the fact Moyse instantly was given opportunities other cyclists (actual cyclists not sliders looking for a novelty to add to their resume) would never be given.  For example Moyse appeared to do all of her track racing on a CCA* Look.  Not a bad starter machine.  Especially given that at the same time Moyse was gripping about not getting to ride World Cups for Canada she was proudly posting video blogs of how she was grappling the challenge of riding rollers.  Logic might dictate that if you don’t have the skill to warm up for the event you maybe shouldn’t do the event…

 But to Moyse it was a tragedy that she wasn’t allowed to represent her country at track cycling’s highest stage, especially after she conquered those whirling steel drums of death. 

Not a bad starter bike. In all fairness I'm sure IO's are tough on the rollers.

It was safe to say that at this point I was not a Moyse fan.  She came across as entitled, self-important and she was speaking ill of a federation that had done her nothing but favours.  Flash forwards to the fall.  Moyse has ridden in the Pan American Championships and Canadian Nationals are in Dieppe.  Moyse is MIA.  I am sure she was focusing on bobsleigh- which is fine, except for the point where she had now wasted CCA resources for nothing.

And this is where we get to the core of my argument.  If you want to do national team projects- ESPECIALLY development projects participation at Nationals should be an absolute given.  Non-negotiable.  Proven World Cup performers are a slightly different ball of yarn but even then their participation (and I am not saying they have to be on peak form) should be heavily encouraged unless there are extenuating circumstances.

In not showing up Moyse not only underlined her lack of commitment to pursuing cycling as anything other than an ego boost.  It meant that the time and probably money that went into her training at LA and competing at Pan-Ams had ZERO multiplier effect.  Had she gone to nationals she would have helped increase the depth of the sprint tournament and keirin – helping to create a deeper event that every other female racer riding sprint events in Canada would have benefited from.  Instead she dinned on international competition and left the CCA to pick up the cheque.

Part of why these young women rip is becasue their skills were honed at the state level

 long before they went to an international competition.

  That and they are super colour coordinated.

And while I have used Moyse as an example I will point out that she is not the only offender in this category- several juniors who competed in the Junior Pan-American Championships failed to attend nationals last year – for no valid reason to the best of my knowledge.  In my mind participation at nationals should be the bare minimum commitment level for juniors that then want to represent their country in international competition.  If a kid goes to Pan-Ams and Worlds and then skips Nationals there is no way they should be considered for the pool the next year. Bottom line, bike racing is a sport that demands commitment and these kids need to show it.

Nationals are one of the few chances that coaches get to see developing athletes in direct competition, and one of very few domestic racing opportunities for development.  As I’ve said before if the miss-and-out is our Country’s collective Achilles heel then we can’t put enough emphasis on the quality racing opportunities these kids get.  We don’t need the Carletons or the Pelletier-Roys to be on top form at nationals, but having them there adds a value to every developing racer at the event.

Collectively as a cycling country we need to be working to ensure that nationals are as deep an event as possible since we have so few opportunities for our track racers to compete in deep and quality events.

British kids fighting for a shot.

In the next week a team will race the women’s Team Pursuit at Pan-Ams.  Of these one is a speedskater who has never competed in a track race let alone at nationals.  It is impossible to say if she is actually quicker than the tier of women who went to nationals last year.  What is clear is that she is being afforded opportunities that are not available to most Canadian track racers.  And in giving her the opportunity the CCA risks eroding what transparency they have build up in the track program over the last few years (though why they continue to refuse to publish trials times in what should be an imperial selection is a mystery to me).

I know nothing about this rider/skater, I’m just hoping that for track in Canada’s sake, she’s not another Heather Moyse.

*CC – how terribly this rebrand has been handled is a topic for a whole other blog post

Reasons for a Grass Track #1

 Or Why Laura Trott is a Great Big Bully

In my last blog entry I promised to talk a bit about an initiative to bring grass track racing to Ottawa.  I’m pretty fired up about it- in part because I had an absolute blast the only time I raced grass track at the Southern Games in Trinidad in 2006, but more importantly for another reason.  I think it can be a valuable tool to help develop international riders with robust skill sets- skills that as a nation we currently lack at the international level.

The Canadian track team has collectively taken huge strides in the last 4 years.  More riders are getting exposure to international track events than at any point since I’ve started racing (Note: You will never find me gripping that a rider was taken to an event that was over their head, because I pulled my hair out for ten years as Canadian talent had to stay home because our federation wouldn’t commit to supporting a program). 

The entire track program has shifted its orientation to LA to be near the only international standard 250m in North America.  Because clearly our riders can’t be competitive unless they are riding on pristine Siberian pine.  Yet for our top Olympic track contenders this past year their limiting factors had nothing to do with speed, or training facilities or exposure to top notch international racing.  Rather what they lacked was the sort of fundamentals that many of their competition were exposed to from a young age.

Olympic Lesson: Our top riders lack the soft-skills of their competition

 I’m going to pick on Zack Bell and Tara Whitten in this blog.  For a couple of reasons, the first is that they are both exceptionally nice, role model athletes.  So the chances of them taking it personally against me and executing revenge filled counter-strikes are pretty slim. I hope.

More importantly to my argument, they are both World-Class, fruit of the genetic-freak-tree physical talents.  Both riders went from novice racers to either Olympians or World Championships medalists WITHIN an Olympic cycle.  Give that a second to sink in.

And while both riders are utter mutants when it comes to the physical metrics of track riding (speed, power endurance ect) the chink in both their armour internationally has been their bike handling.

By bike handling I mean, not just their abilities to manoeuvre their machines but also the larger process in which they read (and more importantly anticipate) the race and make split second tactical decisions.

I’m not suggesting that either Zach or Tara are BAD bike handlers.  Bad bike handlers don’t win World Cups.  They more than hold their own at the top of the result sheet against the best track riders on the planet.  However, having both come into the sport in their twenties, they concede an advantage to their rivals in this area.  At the risk of sounding Brailsfordian you simply cannot afford to concede that sort of marginal difference at the top flight of elite sport.  Both these riders are well aware of this fact, and both have worked exceptionally hard to improve this element of their riding.

Nowhere is this gap so flagrantly highlighted than in the Miss-in-Out, a cycling event that combines all of the worst elements of a bar room brawl and tax evasion.  And it is here that I would introduce two riders with physical talent similar (though perhaps not as exceptional) to Zack and Tara- Laura Trott and Bryan Coquard.

These pint sized racer are arguable the two best miss-and-out riders on the planet at the moment.  Seriously – they are nasty.  Youtube any-miss-and-out that they’ve won over the last two years and argue otherwise.  Heck let me do it for you:

According to a friend of mine, a few years ago at Junior Worlds Coquard was riding the wall at the guardrail on route to winning the points race. 

Trott absolutely muscled her way around in the bunch this summer in London.  She shot gaps that may not have been there and she shoved Kristin Wild around like a playground bully.  Wild is a top flight rider, roughly twice the size of the diminutive Trott.  And Trott owned her like a sub-prime mortgage.

Both Coquard and Trott are fast, quality bike racers that make instinctive decisions and commit to them.

Where the Grass Track Fits In

My hope is that by running fun low key grass track races for Ottawa’s cycling youth is that we can develop the next generation to have these innate skills. Because skills, like most things (excluding organic chem and cleanliness) come easy when learned early.  Skills are much harder to come by as the athletes get older.  If we have a bunch of 13-17 year old kids riding chariots and miss-and-out then hopefully they will develop the soft skills that will help them out years down the road should they both chose to pursue elite cycling and happen to have the physiology to do so (and even if they don’t it should be a whole lot of fun along the way).

We can build fast tracks. We can train with power. We can do all kinds of fancy wind-tunnel testing. 

But in the end it is still bike racing, and we need to make sure we are giving kids coming up through the system to tools to race their bikes, not just be fast on them.

Disclaimer 1: I have no idea if Trott or Coquard raced grass track.  I know Trott started track cycling at a young age as an alternative to swimming.  Two top British riders who did get their start grass track racing are Victoria Pendleton and Craig McLean.

Disclaimer 2: Despite having raced from a young age, and having done a fair bit of track league as a junior some of you are likely aware that I am a fairly shoddy bike handler. I like to think it’s more because I am a Safety Bear than actually a bad bike handler, but that might just be denial.  Meh, we’re not all diamonds in the rough.

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

But I want my kid racing NOW!

So this post is going to be a bit of topic change.  I had been going to split my attention over the next little bit dithering on about developing track (and tracks) in Canada and on the topic of women’s racing.

Recent events however have given me pause to think (this alone is a rare occurance) on the topic of youth racing. Specifically on pre-junior and even pre-cadet racing, and when and how are the best ways to get kids into the sport.

Ain't my fault your kid brought a knife to a gun fight



It’s not a subject I had previously given a lot of thought- I've always figured the ideal pipeline invovled kids getting into riding in their early teens riding heaps and gradually racing and travelling more each season.

Not surprisingly this happens to be how I did it.  I've never really debated the merits of racing at ten before.

I began riding in 1994 and racing in 1995 as a cadet sport (however they moved the age categories around in 1996 and I was actually a cadet for three years- so retroactively I suppose I was what used to be called a minime). In that first year I did exactly 3 races- a novice category road race (for unlicensed U17 riders I believe) and two mountain bike races, the High school Mountain Bike Championships at Hardwood Hill and the Fall Festival Mountain Bike race at Holiday Valley.

What was interesting to me- and even a touch surprising, was that as I pondered the topic I discovered that I wasn’t overly romanced by the concept of creating National Championships for younger riders- even though I am a hudge advocate of accesable low frills grass roots racing.

I'm agaisnt it for a couple of reasons:

• It doesn’t make a lot of sense to start putting the burden of travel on kids (and their parents) that early.  Canada is a big country and it gets financially ugly pretty quick.  If these kids are going to go anywhere in the sport they will be playing this unfunded travel game all through Junior and likely into U23.

• I’m not convinced it helps the kids outcomes.  Yes European and the United States have youth categories down to U10.  Does it help? Aside from the fact European nations have different geographic realities, can anyone document to me that the kids doing well in the youth races have any correlation to the kids winning U23 titles when it begins to REALLY matter?  If you want examples look to the US and feel free to google: Ceclia Potts, Matt Kelly, Walker Ferguson, Megan Long, Josh Thornton, Ryan Miller – all of whom were heralded at young ages as future super stars.  All all of whom fizzled in the senior ranks.  Even Mike Creed never lived up to the thirty some national titles he won in various junior ranks.

Millie Tanner has been crushing the 10-12 year old TT's so hard Spider Tech folded

their team and just gave her a stack of unmarked bills.  For realsies.

• You are better off focussing on creating a lot of affordable local and grass root events- the more kids you expose to the sport, the greater the chances of finding the next Ryder or Pendrel.  This years OBC Cross series made a big effort to tailor their events to young riders and the results have been palatable – with thirty odd kids participating.  Do these kids really need to make a trip to Vancouver to “develop?” 

The Ontario High School Mountain Bike Championships I mentioned is an interesting case study of an excellent championship style event for young riders.  For nearly twenty years it has offered a short distance event for midget, junior and senior, boys and girls.  Although not a real high school championships (OFSSAA it ain’t) it traditionally gets (by Ontario MTB standards at least) very large fields.  It is a fantastic event for kids to gain entry into the sport, and ha quick look at past champions shows Evan McNeely, Laura Bietola, Andrew Watson and Ryan Dey as former champions.  Recent years have seen 300-400 participants, and if my memory is accurate fields were once much larger.  The participation rate is likely due to the emphasis on the team categories- kids that already ride or race are encouraged to drag out friends to field teams, and new kids are exposed to the sport.

A young McNeeley at Hardwood.  I jacked this from his blog.

Hopefully he neither reads mine, nor is litigious.

In my mind this is the direction we should focus youth racing in- regionalized events that limit travel to a reasonable distance. Events like the Highschool Championships and Ontario Summer Games expose a broader cross section of kids to racing than might otherwise enter cycling and create races that are prestigious and important for the PARTICIPANT – not their parent.

I feel bad for the young riders and would be racers at this past weekend’s National Cyclocross Championships.  Lacking categories of thier own many of these riders had the message hammered home to them by well meaning parents that they were getting screwed by the big mean Cycling Canada and the evil Cycling BC.

What those kids missed was not just a chance to race, they missed a chance to revel in the environment of elite racing. 

They got to miss out on watching 3 of Canada’s 4 Olympic MTB representatives in action.  They missed the chance to wander the tents and see how some of this country’s fastest riders warm up and get ready for racing.  To geek out on what tires people were running, and all of the other bike nerdery that comes with that age (seriously ask any cadet in any race parking lot what the best fork/tire/carbon wheel is- guarantee the kid had put more thought and research into his answer than any homework assignment he’s ever been given). 

These kids missed the change to have a former World Champion sign their t-shirts.  They missed the chance to just immerse themselves into bike racing when it is all new and exciting, and frankly, just a little bit bigger and shinier than it will be when they are older.

Yes these kids did a race. But they are probably also stoked about this part.

(Copyright Pedal)

If these kids are going to be future champions then they will be champions.  And not because their parents forced them, or because they were the Under -11 female marathon XC champion of Canada.  No, they will be champions because in addition to being talented and dedicated athletes, somewhere along the line they will have fallen in love with racing bikes. 

What I vividly remember from the first “big races” I went to, a Canada Cup in 1996 at Hardwood and Nationals the following year, was not so much the racing. What left an impact was getting to the see proverbial stars of the day and getting to soak in the environment of an elite bike race.  For that reason probably the most memorable race I did as a cadet was a non-Ontario Cup points race at Scanlon Creek.

This almost completely insignificant race was used as part of a pre-Atlanta Olympics training camp.  In attendance were Alison Sydor (then reigning World Champion and soon to be Olympic silver medalist), Warren Sallenback (who would go on to place top-15 at the Games) and Lesley Tomplinson.  It was super exiting to have big time pros at an everyday race.  To this day I have a picture (a real one – remember film?) of myself and Alison Sydor.  She was even kind enough to sign my Rocky Mountain Bikes t-shirt. 

Nope no Rocky Mountain bikes there.

 

Which was gracious given that she rode for Volvo Cannondale at the time. And that I had a truly horrible bleach job.

No apologies if this post seems overly nostalgic.  Someone declared on a recent online forum that we can’t grow the sport if we keep looking at the past and not the future.  The irony is the poster had no idea about Canada’s recent youth cycling past. This person argued blindly that we needed youth categories at Cross Nats. 

We’ve had those categories before.  The first National Cyclocross Championships I rode were in Cadet in 1996 and the category has been held at nationals several times since.  And that first Canada Cup I went to? It had over a thousand racers.

Amongst these racers were a staggering SEVENTY Cadet Sport boys and another THIRTY Cadet experts.  So maybe we can learn something from the past, because we sure as hell don’t have 100 cadets riding mountain bikes in Ontario anymore.

An Oldie on Velodromes

This article first appeared in Pedal Magazine in June of 2008.  I thought I would re-post it, as it sets the stage for a number of follow up posts I plan on writting about building velodromes and developing track in general in Canada.  Also it nicely highlights the fact  I over use the phrase "much has been made of":

Much has been made of recent proposals to replace the Victoria Velodrome located near the Juan de Fuca Recreation Centre with an all-weather new stadium complex for soccer, football and rugby teams.

The 333m velodrome, located near the municipalities of Colwood and Metchosin, is a legacy of the 1994 Commonwealth Games and is one of only seven velodromes in Canada “ three of which are concrete, two are indoor facilities, and two are outdoor wood tracks. The Victoria track has held up well over the years, benefiting from its resilient concrete surface and Victoria's mild winters (maintenance is largely limited to pressure washing the moss from the banking in the spring). It's clearly a durable facility with low-cost maintenance needs, but would be very expensive to replace. Its banking is both shallow enough for beginners to ride slowly, yet steep enough for riders to motor pace, making it accessible to a wide cross section of riders. Since the Commonwealth Games, the track has hosted provincial and national championships as well as a Word Cup event and several American Velodrome Challenges (a North America-wide series).

Much has been made in recent years of the fact that the Victoria velodrome lacks a tunnel in its infra-structure and that it's not a 250m track. The lack of a tunnel did indeed mean that Victoria was unable to continue hosting World Cup track events after 1996. This is now a moot point, however, as the World Cup events currently use indoor 250m tracks because the races are scheduled during the North American winter (the one venue that differs is Moscow which is an indoor 333m velodrome).

Moreover, it's important to recognize that these features do not mean that Victoria cannot host international track competitions. In fact, it's only World Championships, World Cups and Olympics that cannot be held on such a surface. Many of cycling's most popular track events are held on non-250m length tracks, including the Ghent 6 Day, the Tasmanian Christmas Carnival and the West Indies vs. the World Series in the Caribbean. The Lehigh Valley Velodrome, the famed T-Town track, is the most successful track in North America and relies on a bridge over the track similar to what was used when Victoria hosted a World Cup event in 1996. Last summer T-Town hosted a series of UCI events that awarded precious UCI points to successful racers and drew riders from Canada, the USA, New Zealand, Australia, Trinidad and Denmark, just to name some of the countries participating. The recent Pan American Championships in Uruguay that saw some amazing Canadian successes were also held on an outdoor concrete track.

There is no better example that track quality need not be a barrier to the quality of events it can host than the prestigious Tasmanian Christmas Carnivals. These annual meets held between Boxing Day and New Years draw international fields vying for large prize purses on decidedly unorthodox tracks. While one Carnival is held on the Launceston Silverdome an indoor wood velodrome (with a seemingly bizarre length of 286m) the bulk of the racing takes place on dead flat 500 meter tracks around cricket fields. The lack of uniform 250m tracks doesn't inhibit the likes of Ben Kersten and Shane Kelly from putting on displays of speed and power that wow the thousands of spectators that pack the stands each night. It should be noted that the that the popularity of racing on the poorer tracks played a significant role in supporting the building of the Silverdome – an excellent and facility with a very fast surface, despite its unorthodox length.

What Victoria does provide is a versatile racing and training surface that is accessible to a diverse assortment of age groups and ability levels. The track allows for some excellent elite level racing and training. It's perfect for motorpacing without requiring the use of a specialty electric derny, and at the same time, is a facility that is safe and un-intimidating enough to teach primary and middle school groups to ride on the track with their mountain or BMX bikes in a supervised setting that introduces them to bike safety and rudimentary racing skills.

Cycling BC youth coach Dan Proulx has taught several youth and school groups to ride the Victoria track over the years and commented: "The Juan de Fuca Velodrome is one of the best tracks to teach young riders on. Most children are able to ride the track within ten minutes of arriving at the velodrome. The ease of use and safety of the track are some of it’s key features. The kids were always thrilled with their experience and many have gone on to become track riders as adults. The Juan de Fuca track is the best track in Canada for it’s suitability to both young children and elite riders."

Proulx also noted that when he lived and coached in Calgary he would annually take a group of junior cyclists to Victoria each spring to benefit from the track facilities as well as Victoria ideal riding routes and moderate climate.

In terms of the life and maintenance of concrete velodromes, the Argyll Velodrome in Edmonton Alberta is a legacy of the 1978 Commonwealth Games and is both older and has weathered far harsher winters in its long life than the Victoria track. It is nearly identical in length and design to the Victoria track. Most recently, the Argyll track provided a suitable home base for Lori-Anne Muenzer's campaign for Olympic Gold in 2004. There are few tracks in Canada and it is unlikely that that number will increase significantly in the near future. Building a new velodrome is undeniably an expensive capital investment. It is therefore extremely important to preserve those existing tracks that we do have in this country, especially if it's a track with relative low cost of maintenance. It would be a tragedy to destroy a track such as the Victoria velodrome to replace it with another playing surface that could be located elsewhere. Velodromes are simply too scarce a resource to condone this planned demolition.

The programming and community engagement at the velodrome in Victoria may not have been utilized to its full capacity in recent years, but it has all the facilities and attributes that it needs to be an important regional hub in track cycling, especially as the nearby Burnaby Velodrome continues to grow in terms of both participants and events. This is not to suggest that the Victoria track has been dormant, for it hosts a series of learn to ride and race clinics, plus several races a year, including the BC Provincial Track Championships. It also serves as a valuable training ground for Pacific Sport athletes, local cyclists and triathletes. Rather, it is to suggest that greater coordination among the various cycling facilities has much to offer towards increased track usage. A few years ago, making use of coordinated planning with other tracks in other regions, the American Velodrome Challenge events attracted many riders from as far away as Quebec, Oregon, Washington, Alberta with even a contingent of New Zealand riders racing at the events.

There is perhaps no better testament to the role that the Victoria Velodrome has played in developing cycling in Canada, than in 2004 when Victoria last hosted the National Track Championships. Two of the riders that won events there were winning their first ever national titles. Four years later, those two riders, Zach Bell and Gina Grain, have won more than a half dozen titles between them, and will be representing Canada in the track events at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. For both of these riders, Victoria was an important stepping stone in a journey that will culminate this summer at the Olympic Games opening ceremonies. Canada does not have sufficient sports resources that we can afford to destroy existing, low cost, flexible racing and training centres. Hopefully, this wonderful facility can be preserved so that it can continue to generate future generations of internationally successful Canadian riders.