Comment 69319

By mystoneycreek (registered) - website | Posted September 09, 2011 at 17:31:41

I feel like I need to clarify what I've been saying.

I understand the examples that have been given of other velodromes. However, I would be quite leery to be comparing things in England or on the Continent in any way with our situation in Canada, or in North America. (Feel free to shake your head at how I'm framing this part of my 'argument'.)

England is so very, very small, and is so very, very close to Europe. (Not so close as to make it possible to see it as part of Europe, at least not to me. Not even when I lived there.) Population density, culture, proximity to other centres of cycling make for an entirely different situation.

I know this may seem like 'damning with faint praise', but I'm not against this PanAm Games velodrome...no matter where it's located...having its doors open to 'the community'. But the notion of Canada's only indoor, UCI-sanctioned velodrome not have most of its capacity being used by international competitors (from Canada, the US, wherever) either at the local, provincial or national level of ability seems ridiculous. This will be only the second facility of its kind in North America. I'd expect that whoever would be running it would be looking maxing-out on the top-flight possibilities, rather than focusing on 'community access'. I guess I don't see things the same as others here: I want a mostly-elite facility with guaranteed access for development programmes, school programmes and 'community access'. But if we're going to spend the amount of money that seems to be required for this facility, I'd sure as Hell hope we have our intentions locked down. (As opposed to what we saw for the stadium.)

(And I do have to point out that we've long had top-level international competitors cycling for Canada. So the weighting of the argument in the 'we won't have any Olympic champions UNLESS we have community cycling uses...well, shaky logic at best.)

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