The good ole days of track racing: wooden rims on wooden boards.
2008 Olympics - Spanish Madison team: Juan Llaneras and co.Ah track racing, the original form of cycle-sport. It conjures thoughts of chamois creme, 225 lbs psi 18c tubular tires, and balls-out tactical sprints in elimination races. Come the depths of winter in northern climes, and track is really all there is left.
Which is likely a good thing. People should find something else to do besides obsess on the weight of their drivetrains. Me? I'm Cuba-bound, and I'm not even taking my bike. The closest I'll get is renting a motorina (as in Vespa). I can let go of it, see? That's what I'm telling you, anyway.
In truth, I'd love to take my track bike out to a velodrome, but that'll be an adventure for another day, like a day when there is a track closer than 250km from where I sit.
But the track is on my mind - the Six Day races are well underway in Europe and Zabel will do his 'final' race of any pro variety in Berlin this January. Thoughts of going have come to mind. Inside dope is that the Berlin Six is the best of the circuit, with the hardest racing.
A Six basically features all the track events or nearly: solo and team time trials, elimination races, derny races (w. each racer paced by an electric motorina at crazy high speeds), and the featured event, the Madison, which is a two-man relay race where teammates hand-sling each other into the action for 80 laps or so. It's fast and furious, and pretty damned dangerous. The winning team has travelled the farthest by the time it's over.
Basically, the trick is 'steal' a lap by launching an explosive sprint when the rest of the field are watching each other. To keep things interesting there are sprints for points every so often and a 100 points accumulated gets your team a lap on the rest (usually). In between all these events are either a whole other 'B' level Six or cabaret style entertainments, just to keep the audience entertained. In many velodromes much of the infield itself is given over to spectators, drinking fine Belgian draught beers and doing a lot of yelling.
I've only been to one Six, and it wasn't European but Ontarian. There was still a bit of a crowd, and the elimination race was damned exciting. Madison wasn't bad either, even if they weren't doing proper handslings. Round these parts, they have 'madison shorts', with a bulging thing sewn inside them to push on (No, not in the crotch area thank you).
As can be seen from the two photos, things have been calmed down considerably since the good old days. Spain got the silver medal in the madison at Peking, for the record.
