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Outside Magazine September 2001

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Cycling
The Track Is Back
Will a strategically sited new velodrome revitalize a bike sport that has languished in obscurity for nearly a century?
By Michelle Pentz


	Born Again: the New Mexico Skydrome as it appeared when first constructed in Manitoba, Canada

When Kathy Volski climbed out of a van in the hills above Albuquerque with a dozen other cycling-track directors for an advance peek at the site of the New Mexico Skydrome earlier this year, she realized she could be witnessing the rebirth of one of the nation's lesser-known bike sports. "We took one look," recalls Volski, the manager of Houston's Alkek Velodrome, "and said, 'World record.'"

She wasn't just being polite. Like the 20 other velodromes around the country, the Skydrome will be a banked oval track about the size of an ice-hockey rink, upon which as many as 30 racers will simultaneously pedal stripped-down custom bikes as fast as 40 mph, sans brakes. But unlike other tracks, the Skydrome—originally built for the 1999 Pan American Games in Manitoba, Canada, and being reassembled this month in the suburb of Rio Rancho—will enjoy a choice location: At an altitude of about 5,500 feet, Rio Rancho's air is thin (which spells lower wind resistance), and the sun shines over mostly smog-free skies more than 320 days a year, allowing for four-season training. Further, the Skydrome, tucked in a natural bowl, will be nicely sheltered from the wind. "A five-mph headwind can slow you down a tenth of a second, which is the difference between a national or world record," says Matt Martinez, race director at San Jose, California's Hellyer Velodrome.

Skydrome director Johnathan Powell, 38, a veteran road racer, believes all of the above factors will lead to unprecedented speeds on his track once it's up and running come June 2002. And it's high time. Elite cyclists have set only a single world record in the past decade at the 20 other U.S. velodromes, where athletes in many cases cope with harsh winter weather. Meanwhile, thinner air at high-altitude tracks in Mexico City and in Colombia has fueled numerous world records, such as Canadian Curt Harnett's unsurpassed 9.865-second 200-meter sprint at the Bogota velodrome in 1995. To Powell, it's time to bring the trophies home. "Racers like Lance Armstrong will come to attempt to break world records," he says, defending a sport that hasn't pierced the popular consciousness since its heyday back in the early 1900s. "This is the first step toward filling in the blanks of cycling in the U.S."

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