Home › Guides › The sports behind the games
A velodrome is a banked oval track built for bicycle racing. The Olympic standard is exactly 250 metres round, banked at about 45 degrees in the turns, usually surfaced in timber. The bikes have one fixed gear and no brakes. The painted lines are not decoration: each one defines a rule about where you may ride and when you may move.
Because a bicycle going round a corner has to lean, and on a flat surface the only thing stopping it sliding out is the grip of two very narrow tyres. Tip the floor instead, and the rider stays roughly upright relative to the track while the track does the turning.
On a 250 metre track the turns reach around 45 degrees. Standing on it, that looks impossible, and people who visit one for the first time usually say so. On a bike at speed it is simply the floor: the force pushing you into the boards is the same one that would be throwing you off a flat corner, and the banking turns it from a problem into the thing that holds you there.
There is a catch, and it is why the bottom of the banking is a bad place to stop. Below about 25 km/h there is not enough of that force to hold you, and you slide down. A track rider's first lesson is that speed is what keeps you up, which is the opposite of almost every other kind of cycling.
A curiosity from the engineering: the turns are actually banked ten to fifteen degrees less than the physics alone would suggest, and the straights ten to fifteen degrees more. The transitions matter more than the extremes, and a track that was optimal at both ends would be horrible in between.
Four markings, from the inside out. Every one of them is a regulation.
The blue band at the very bottom, properly called the *côte d'azur*, is about a tenth of the surface and is technically not part of the track at all. Riding on it is not illegal, but dropping onto it to cut inside somebody will get you disqualified. In timed events it is blocked off with foam, precisely so nobody can shorten the course.
The black measurement line sits 20 cm above the blue band and is 5 cm wide. Its inner edge is what defines the track's length: when a velodrome is called 250 metres, this is the line that is 250 metres. It is therefore the shortest way round, which is why riders chasing a time are glued to it.
The red sprinter's line has its outer edge 90 cm up from the inside of the track. The strip between black and red is the sprinter's lane, and it carries the central rule of sprint racing: a rider leading in that lane may not leave it while being passed, and a rider coming past must go around the outside and may only come back down once the pass is finished. Break it and you are relegated.
The blue stayer's line is much higher, at least 2.5 metres up or halfway across the track. It was drawn for motor-paced racing, and in a Madison it is where the resting half of each pair circulates until they are slung back in.
There is also a white line 200 metres before the finish, which is where a sprint is deemed to begin, and a black finish line on a white band.
A track bike is a deliberately reduced machine, and each thing missing from it is missing for a reason.
No freewheel. The rear sprocket is fixed to the hub, so if the wheel is turning, the pedals are turning. You cannot coast. You slow down by resisting the pedals, and you can do it with real precision once you are used to it.
No brakes, which follows directly from the above. In a bunch on a steep banking, one rider grabbing a brake is the fastest way to put a dozen people on the floor, because nobody behind can do anything about it. Everyone slowing at the same rate is safer than anyone being able to slow suddenly.
One gear. You choose it before you start and you live with it. Sprinters push something enormous and accept that getting it moving hurts; endurance riders take something smaller they can spin for an hour.
No bar tape on the track bars for some riders, no bottle cages, nothing that can fall off. Anything shed onto the track at racing speed is a hazard for everyone behind.
It takes about one session to stop trying to freewheel, and the moment you stop thinking about it is the moment track riding starts making sense.
An evening at a track is a programme, not a single race, and the events are deliberately different from one another.
The flying 200 is the qualifier for sprint events: a few laps to wind up, then 200 metres flat out against the clock. It decides seeding, and nothing else.
The match sprint is two or three riders over three laps, and it is the strangest thing on the card to watch for the first time.
Most of it is spent going slowly, because nobody wants to lead into the wind. A sprint is won in the last 200 metres and the rest is a negotiation about who is forced to start it.
The keirin fixes that problem with a pacer. The field is held in line behind a motorised bike that winds the speed up and then pulls off, leaving everybody to sprint from somewhere near full speed.
The scratch race is the simplest: a bunch, a set number of laps, first across the line wins. The complication is that riders can gain a lap on the field, which beats anybody who has not.
The elimination, universally called the devil, removes the last rider across the line every other lap until two are left.
It is the most immediately watchable event in the sport, because the rule is one sentence and the consequence of sitting at the back is visible to everybody.
The individual pursuit puts two riders on opposite sides of the track, each chasing the other.
They almost never meet. It is a time trial with the most personal scoreboard in cycling: your rival, slowly getting closer or further away, directly across the infield from you.
The points race and the Madison are the long ones, scored on intermediate sprints and laps gained, and they are where people who like tactics end up.
Three things surprise everybody.
The first is the noise. A timber track with thirty riders on it is loud in a way no other cycling is, and the sound changes as the bunch moves up and down the banking.
The second is how short 250 metres is. At racing speed a lap takes under fifteen seconds, which means the whole tactical situation changes about four times a minute. There is no time to think, only to have decided already.
The third is that the banking stops being frightening almost immediately. The nervousness lasts about two laps, and then it is replaced by the much more practical worry of whether you can hold the wheel in front.
If you want the feel of it without the trip, the velodrome game on this site is the closest we could get: the same 250 metre geometry, the same lines on the boards, and an evening's programme rather than one race.
Olympic and World Championship velodromes are exactly 250 metres. Other tracks on the UCI calendar run from 133 to 500 metres, always a length where a whole or half number of laps makes a kilometre. The measurement is taken along the black line, 20 cm up from the blue band.
Because in a close bunch on a steep banking, one rider braking suddenly is the fastest way to bring down everyone behind them. With fixed gears and no brakes, everybody slows at roughly the same rate, which is far safer than anybody being able to stop abruptly.
The côte d’azur marks the inside edge of the racing surface and is not technically part of the track. Riding on it is allowed, but dropping onto it to cut inside another rider is a disqualification, and in timed events it is blocked with foam so nobody can shorten the course.
About 45 degrees in the turns of a 250 metre track, and much shallower on the straights. It looks impossible on foot and feels like ordinary ground once you are moving, because above roughly 25 km/h the forces hold you against it.
Yes, and it is the first thing taught in an accreditation session. Below about 25 km/h there is not enough force holding you to the surface, so you slide down the banking. On a track, speed is what keeps you up.
A match sprint is two or three riders over three laps with no pacing, so it usually starts very slowly while nobody wants to lead. A keirin holds the field behind a pacer that builds the speed and then pulls off, so everybody sprints from a flying start.
That is the problem we are actually trying to solve. Turbo Trainer Games turns your watts into the controls of a browser game — your power flies the aircraft, climbs the mountain, pulls the sledge. Nothing to install, and it works with a smart trainer you already own.
It is in closed testing at the moment, so there is nothing to play yet. But you can put your name down.
Ask for early access