Track Cycling - Never too young to start

[reposted from SS/FG forum]


I was skimming my old park district website to check on curfews for the basketball courts (thats where i practice tricks and such) when i realized that my small suburb has its very own velodrome!

My small little closed off corner of the world, full of rich old-fart retirees has one of the 23 velo's in the country, less than a quarter mile from my house.

Not only that but my highschool just started a track racing club, sponsored by the velo and 3 LBS's. A little miffed that they decided to do this 3 years after I graduate (would have been a sport i would have actual interest in participating), I looked through pics to see if I recognized anyone from highschool.

Lo and behold I stumbled across the junior race-event pics, and some pics made me jealous that other kids had father's/mothers who encouraged this "track racing" hobby.

Check out these kid's sick rides.

(check out the kid 2nd from the foreground's fixed gear brakeless ride. Im not saying that the dad is irresponsible for letting his 7 year old kid rely on skidding, but i doubt the kid is a prodigy if he's putting MTB tires on to race in a velo. Also notice the mother's helmet. Never can be too safe when there are kids with under-developed motorskills flying around at speeds excess of 7 miles per hour)





ZOMG THE KID IS SO PRO HE HAS NO PEDALS! HE ONE-UPPED US NO-GEAR NO BRAKE FIXIES!!





Apparantly this girl and her brother are prodigies or something. I dont know if its a rumor or anything but at her age she's pushing out times like 14-15.....idk if i believe it.

check out the kid 2nd from the foreground's fixed gear brakeless ride.
Why assume it's a fixed gear? Why can't it be a coaster brake? A fixed gear is a brake anyway. At least mine is.

I was at MidWest regionals there in June or July and there was some kids race the night before the big races on Friday night.
Apparently there are two seperate people who run the track. And the Friday I was there, the park turned off the lights at 10:00pm in the middle of a men's race that I thankfully was not in. Pitch black, but the baseball field next door was still lit up, even though nobody was playing.

[reposted from SS/FG forum](check out the kid 2nd from the foreground's fixed gear brakeless ride. Im not saying that the dad is irresponsible for letting his 7 year old kid rely on skidding, but i doubt the kid is a prodigy if he's putting MTB tires on to race in a velo. Also notice the mother's helmet. Never can be too safe when there are kids with under-developed motorskills flying around at speeds excess of 7 miles per hour)

You know you're not supposed to skid on the track right? I doubt he relies on skidding at all.

At one of the junior races I've seen there was a girl who's dad was a track racer and he had built her a track bike. She totally smoked the rest of the juniors (had the race been two laps she would have lapped them).

It looks like the bike that he's riding is a modified mountain bike or BMX, hence the tires. You can't really get a track bike sized to fit a kid unless you go custom.

I doubt they make 20" road/track slicks anyway.