It’s not every year that we have such a strong crop of juniors graduating into the senior ranks. Yesterday the “U.S. National Track Cycling Talent Pool” was announced (pdf description here). In the sprint squad we have Michael Blatchford, and the sprint development squad includes Aaron Kacala and Ryan Nelman.
This was a particularly strong year for the guys. Of 10 male members in the pool, one is a junior. There is also a set of development squads, where 2 of 7 male riders are “graduating” juniors. The ratios don’t sound high, until you realize that the main group is open to all the top riders in the country, and the development squads are open to riders up to age 22.
I predict that over the next few years we will see a surge of strong “graduating” junior women, as riders such as Kim Geist (17), Kim LaFleur (16), Cindy Lakatosh (16), Catherine Fiedler (15), and Colleen Hayduk (14) work their way up.
Here it is, the feature I have been losing sleep over. Now you can click on a map and get an aerial view of any velodrome in the USA. You can even link to a MapQuest street map.
To see it go to the Velodrome Locator
A few velodromes can be seen well enough to make out the stayers line or at least the start/finish. The rest will at least be identifiable to those who ride them. It all depends on the quality of images available for that velodrome’s location. The best images are normally in or near urban areas, and provide about 1/4 meter resolution.
Have fun, but understand that my server isn’t on a very fast connection. If downloading seems slow you may be sharing the bandwidth with too many other users - consider trying again later. Also, please let me know if you find any bugs or incorrect locations. Just leave a comment.
Where are the velodromes in North America? At least for the USA and Canada, this should give you a pretty good idea.
I also wanted to compare our scattered velodromes to Japan, where even most smaller cities have their own velodrome. The second image shows Japan, with about the right number of velodrome “buttons”. They are not in exact locations, just scattered around the country.
The buttons don’t do anything - but consider this a hint of a future feature.
Most of North America, with red ovals indicating velodromes
Japan, showing the density of velodromes there.
About the data:
The images were generated with NASA’s World Wind program at a simulated altitude of about 3,550 km. World Wind used images from the Blue Marble project, also at NASA. Spots were added later.
The mapped locations are approximate - I have the coordinates for trackes in the USA, but I placed the buttons by hand. Velodromes near obvious geographical features are probably placed best.
I don’t have good mapping tools for Canada or Mexico, but if someone wants to send me the latitude and longitude for velodromes in those locations, I’ll improve the Canadian locations and add Mexico’s. Name and address would be good too, for future reference.
Merriam-Webster makes minor news each year by announcing the top ten words requested that year on its dictionary sites. Number 7 this year was peloton!
7. peloton : noun (1951) : the main body of riders in a bicycle race
This is not a word which is used much at a velodrome, but it’s good news for cycling when a word like this is so widely used.
The top word? “Blog”, for example the one you are reading right now.
Nothing to do with junior track cycling, but I couldn’t resist posting this. It’s a ticket from the 1984 Olympics. The velodrome was on the same land as the current Home Depot center, though not the same spot as the ADT Event Center velodrome.
Tickets were awarded by lottery among those with the earliest postmarks after a set date. I mailed my request on the first possible day, and got front row tickets near the start-finish line for several sessions. This was the first velodrome racing I ever saw, and of course it was great.
1984 Olympics Velodrome Ticket
