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271.xml
Cycling track moves to 'Hamp
271/1/2003
By FRED CONTRADA Staff writer
[email protected]
NORTHAMPTON - A local cycling club has all the pieces in place to revive a once-popular sport that
started in Massachusetts and was honed in Springfield.
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Sitting in a parking lot in South Deerfield are the components for a 170- meter oval wooden track
built for bicycle racing. The Northampton Cycling Club, which bought the track for $1 and trucked it
up from New Jersey, is looking for a place to reassemble it and make it available to professional
racers and the general public.
According to John Frey, a co-founder of the local club, the track is one of about 20 velodromes in
the U.S. The 200-member club hopes it will boost its mission to encourage competitive and
recreational bicycling in the area.
"We're looking to grow the sport in the Pioneer Valley," Frey said.
Still popular in Europe, bicycle racing was developed as a sport in Massachusetts, with Springfield
playing a key role.
According to the Web site for the Lehigh Valley Velodrome, an Ohio track that hosts the Cycling Hall
of Fame, America's first bicycle race took place in Boston in 1878.
The sport began to take off six years later when H.E. Drucker opened a bicycle track inside the
Hampden Park trotting track in Springfield. The track was so well designed that racers were able to
shatter every American and European record during one three-day meet in Springfield. Some 27,000
people attended the event, which put Springfield in the world spotlight, the Web site says.
By the early 1900s, there were more than 100 velodromes in the United States. The sport peaked in
the 1930s, but began to fade as the Great Depression continued.
The Lehigh Valley Velodrome opened for its first full season in 1976.
"It's a world-class facility we're looking to strive towards in the future," Frey said.
The Northampton Cycling Club's track is called the Vandedrome after its builder, Chicago cycler John
VandeVelde. J.D. Bilodeau, another co-founder of the club, said he asked a mutual friend to inquire
about the track, which VandeVelde had stored in New Jersey after moving it around from site to site
in the United States.
"It took a lot of phone calls to get the deal done," Bilodeau said.
The track has a 54-degree pitch at both ends, making it one of the steepest in the country,
according to Bilodeau. The bicycles used for the sport have neither brakes nor gears.
"It's about as simple a bike as you can get," he said.
The club hopes to set up the cypress-wood track at a convenient outdoor location, such as the Three
County Fairground, with an eye toward creating a permanent cycling park. Users would have to obtain
a license from the U.S. Cycling Federation, but Bilodeau said the club hopes to have rental bikes
available to encourage newcomers.