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Pedal powerBy Lei Lei and Matt Hodges (China Daily)Updated: 2007-06-08 09:51
Imagine a pack of racers tearing down a BMX course with a UFO-shaped velodrome and Beijing in the background, as remote-control cameras catch all the action from wires overhead. Crowds will gather at both ends of the snaking course, near the 8-m-high rolling start ramp and at the lower-elevation finish line, as helicopters capture aerial beauty shots. "No one has ever seen a track like this before," said Mats Notlind, a technical director with the International Cycling Union (UCI), who was helping with the venue construction in Beijing last week. "I would say it is the most perfect track ever built," said his colleague Johan Lindstrom, the UCI's BMX sports coordinator. Forget Travis Pastrana. When BMX makes its Olympic debut in Beijing next year it will be in a space age setting that breaks the mould in terms of what the sport has seen before.
"There are going to be some falls," said John Pauline of PTW, the Australian architects who are advising on the course. "There are going to be some spectacular falls." Unlike other venues used for international events that have to cater to all levels of competition, this one has been tailor-made to test the limits of human endurance. The initial start ramp will give the riders maximum acceleration, bigger air on jumps and a greater risk of personal injury. But for BMX fans, that is all part of the thrill. "I think the designers are constantly frustrated that they're always building courses that need to be compromised, whereas at the Olympic Games for the first time they can create the most ridiculously hard BMX course to challenge the best riders in the world," said Pauline. The course will be linked to the neighboring Olympic cycling track (Laoshan velodrome) by a vertical elevator to shrink logistical costs. Together with the nearby mountain biking course, the trio form one of several clusters of Olympic venues that organizers hope will spur development in one of Beijing's less prosperous districts. In fact, the BMX track comprises two overlapping routes: one for the top 32 men in the world (370m) and another for the top 16 women (a slightly shorter 350m). To make the men's competition more unpredictable, those who survive the initial rally out of the gates may have a choice of two routes. China's sports officials are mulling opening a junction one third of the way around that lets riders choose whether to stay on the outside or branch inside onto the women's track. The downside? Those who veer onto the women's side would then have to reconnect with the men's track via an extremely gnarly jump. Fortunately, the races are single-sex only. "Some of the major banks that the women are turning around, the men are going to be jumping over, so they're going to have the biggest air, the biggest hang time, if you like, on these bikes, that the BMX world has ever seen," said Pauline. Lindstrom said the 8m start ramp was a new innovation that was incorporated after it was used successfully in recent World Cups "You don't really see it on normal BMX tracks, but we knew that we wanted a very exciting format in the Olympic Games," he said, adding that the riders will also have to take on gravity: the finish line is 4m lower than the start, creating a natural momentum for the riders that keeps on snowballing until they cross the finish line. It took the UCI three years to design the track, a feat belied by its seemingly simple layout and lack of obstacles. Lindstrom said much thought went into taking the sport to the next level through a carefully engineered venue. "While we were designing the track, we were also developing the sport," he said. "We don't want to just go into the Olympics with the traditional format. We want to create something spectacular." The format of the course also developed through testing at recent World Cup series. The UCI sought feedback from riders and viewers alike to make 2008 a banner year for BMX. "Now we finally got the right concept," said Lindstrom. "It's even more amazing in real life than in the 3D drawings we looked at." As the biggest-ever BMX venue, the track has sucked up vast amounts of materials: 10,000 cubic meters, compared to 3,000-4,000 in regular tracks. The rough layout of the track was finished earlier this month. It will be
fully built before Beijing hosts the UCI BMX Supercross World Cup test event
from August 20-21.
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