Twilight at the Velodrome

This is a good race.

The tactics here are to get behind someone

so that you can take their draft

and spend less energy yourself.

So the wind that they hit, you don't hit.

You don't need to be going pretty fast

for 60 miles, means going really fast for 60 feet.

(bell ringing)

So tonight is the twilight series,

it's a racing series

that we hold here in Kissena, Velodrome.

This is the only one in the city and the state,

and one of three, I believe, in the northeast.

You have Chelsea to race against.

She's racing the guys.

[Female] People are coming from upstate New York,

people are coming from PA,

people are just travelling two blocks down in Queens,

and it's pretty much our home, it's our baby.

We don't have another velodrome.

It was crazy that turn,

turn four is getting more dangerous.

[Male] Yeah it is.

[Chelsea] And it's different

because I'm going at a different speed,

but you guys tend to notice when I ride with the girls.

Holy crap, it's so bumpy.

[Male] I've never had that before.

Yeah, I think I'd spent more energy

trying to hold myself down from the bumps

then actually pedaling.

[Male] There's grass patches everywhere

so it's like, you take that corner real hard,

your rear wheel will literally skid a little.

Definitely scary but you can see the cracks

inside the course; there's like a white slither over there,

and a couple slithers here.

Most velodromes don't have that.

Everything's nice and smooth and well kept.

(bell ringing)

[Male] This was built in 63 I believe,

for the Olympic trials which took place here

for the 64 Olympics,

and we've been running races here ever since.

It was resurfaced a few years ago,

I think there was an article in one of the newspapers

that said, worst track in America,

which it was.

So it's very dangerous. People ride very close together,

like wheel to wheel.

And they go up to about 40 mph in the sprints sometimes.

Track racing goes way, way back, well over 100 years.

Velodrome racing was bicycle racing,

up until basically just before World War Two.

There was one in Harlem, there was a couple in New Jersey,

they was one in Coney Island.

So it takes a bit of skill to learn how to do this

because the bikes have no brakes,

and there's no free willy.

It's a fixed gear bike,

so every time their rear wheel is turning,

the pedals are turning,

so there's no such thing as coasting.

They're always pedaling.

[Male] There's definitely a simplicity and purity to it,

the fact that it's one of the oldest forms

of bicycle racing,

it's just going around in a circle really fast

and you are the engine, you are the purest form of motion

that can be attributed to that vehicle.

You can go as fast as your legs allow it,

you can go as long as your lungs allow it,

and you can go as hard as your entire mental capacity

can put you through.

Pretty much imitates the track bike itself.

It's so simple, it's so pure,

so opposed to, let's say, road racing,

where everything's super sporadic

and so many people all over you attacking the same time,

rigging their bikes back and forth aggressively.

But in a track, it still seems so elegant

and the form of the body from track sprinting

is just super stationary and pretty.

[Male] Tonight there's gonna be a mix of races,

as per usual.

One in done, super tempo, snowball

and then there's also a pointer lap.

There are a couple chariot races which are my favorite.

Everyone lines up at the starting line

and they're standing on their bike.

Like it hard or soft?

[Male] And they have someone behind them holding them

and then when the whistle blows,

that person pushes them and it's just a one lap sprint,

all out.

(whistle blowing)

[Male] That was a weird start.

[Chelsea] Women have a tempo, a five lap tempo.

And that means,

every single lap, I have to sprint.

I feel like if we can ride this,

and we ride it really well,

we can ride anywhere so it's kind of like the base

for all track cycling 'cause a lot of really talented people

really come out of here and go on to other velodromes

and just kill it.