Blaine velodrome gearing up for the future

The sound of cheers and the hum of a dozen racing bicycles filled the National Sports Center's velodrome Sunday as riders participating in the Minnesota Fixed Gear Classic vied for position on the angled track.

That, and packed stands on Saturday, the first day of the weekend event at the velodrome, thrilled bike-racing enthusiasts. After seven years without a national event, boosters are under the gun to create a core of support to build a new, ideally indoor, track before the elements catch up with the 18-year-old velodrome's exposed wood surfaces in 10 years or fewer.

Toward that end, the classic, which served as a prelude to this week's Great River Energy Bicycle Festival, brought in three-time world champion and Italian Olympian Roberto Chiappa and elite cyclists from Australia, Argentina, Canada and all over the United States.

Skeptics say that track cycling is inaccessible to most Minnesotans and that the business model the track needs -- creating buzz by drawing world-class cyclists to national and international events -- is out of step with the grass-roots aspirations of the rest of the National Sports Center. But cyclists rave about the smooth ride on the velodrome.

It is a replica of the one built for the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain. Former Olympic silver and bronze medalist Erin Hartwell, who qualified for the 1992 Games at the velodrome, described it as "one of the best tracks in the country, if not the best."

It's the home track to reigning Masters National Champion James Tainter and University of Minnesota cycling club rising star Brian Crosby.

Hartwell and others compared the sport to NASCAR, with its high speed, fierce competitiveness and, occasionally, spectacular crashes. But to most Minnesotans, track cycling remains undiscovered.

First-class track

The $1.7 million velodrome was one of several facilities built when Minnesota hosted the Olympic Festival in 1990.

"Rudy Perpich [who was then Minnesota's governor] said if we're going to have a velodrome, we're going to have the best velodrome in the country," said David LaPorte, executive director of the Great River Energy Bicycle Festival. "Instead of putting up something made of plywood that would have stood just for the Olympic Festival, they created a world-class cycling venue."

The "cool" factor was enough to send Hartwell on a road trip from Colorado to ride the new track, but it wasn't enough to sustain the velodrome long term.

"In the first year or two, they were carried along by the momentum that was created by the novelty of this facility, but that momentum wasn't going to carry for very long," said LaPorte.

"What we learned very quickly was that these major national championship-bid events for the Olympics were very hard to break even," he said. "They were very risky. We quickly shifted our business model to develop more grass-roots events and participation-based events. ... If we were depending on major national championship events, we would have been out of this business years ago."

To justify a new $2 million-plus velodrome, the program would have to increase its user base about fourfold, he said.

Building interest

Backers have a multipronged challenge, said Kruse, Hartwell and others: to keep the racing schedule exciting enough to draw big-name cyclists, to inspire recreational cyclists and road racers to watch and ideally try it themselves.

"With exposure comes interest, with interest comes sponsorship, and sponsorship is what will fund a facility that's as specialized as this," Williams said.

Track cycling may never be like basketball or football, but other "fringe" sports have found a niche.

"There's a critical mass somewhere in cycling," said Hartwell, now president and CEO of Valley Preferred Cycling Center in Trexlertown, Pa. "They need to find it, just as soccer did a few years ago."

Tainter, who fell in love with track cycling at the velodrome, had doubted whether the sport can build the following it needs to continue. Then he took a group of visiting cyclists to see the venue, including Chiappa (whom he called "the Kobe Bryant of track cycling").

"The first thing they mentioned to me when I greeted them was, 'Wow, what a GREAT track you have here! You have a gem here," he wrote in an e-mail. "After thinking about this, I think it could happen, but it would take a lot of the right people being exposed and educated to what this track, and track racing in general, is all about. We have a great cycling community here in Minneapolis. All walks, all kinds. And the power of the people should never be underestimated."