Originally Posted by
Dalai
A couple of reasons.
It restricts you from holding events which require a 250m track. It isn't like the USA is overrun with indoor tracks so you can chose another venue.
Sub optimal as a training centre for Eastern State cyclists. Although there can be slight differences even in 250m tracks, since the World Championships must be held on 250 tracks it would be optimal for elite athletes to have a venue which rides similar to venues they will race on overseas.
That all sounds nice and true but the flip side is that the cost to put a 250m track in a building is something like 2-3x the cost to put a 200m track in a building. Don't quote me on that number, but it's a surprising amount more [source: people looking into this locally]. Furthermore, hosting events that require a 250m track is an out-and-out money loser, and while a goal of hosting those events is nice, it's completely sensible and possible to build good velodrome projects that
don't have int'l-class racing as their goal. After all, maybe the most successful velodrome in the USA is in Trexlertown, and it's a 333.
I'd happily race on a 200m in a heartbeat. It's big enough that it avoids the whimsical pitfalls of pocket velodromes. And small enough that tactical racing based on taking laps can become a possibility for more people.