Commonwealth velodrome would be 'golden opportunity' for West Midlands

Commonwealth Games organisers are being urged to change their minds and build a new velodrome in the West Midlands for the Birmingham games in 2022.

Olympic champion Chris Boardman is the latest big name in cycling to say that a new velodrome would be an "asset" to the city.

The current plan is to hold the track cycling in 2022 at the Lee Valley VeloPark in east London - 130 miles away - the venue for the Olympic Games in 2012.

Organisers in Birmingham say they have conducted a "rigorous" evaluation and believe London is the most cost effective and realistic option despite a growing online petition, complaints from MPs and anger amongst the cycling community in the West Midlands.

The Olympic gold medallist from the 1992 games, Chris Boardman, has told Sky News that while it has to be a sensible business decision, demand for new facilities is still growing.

"Birmingham needs to decide - what do you want to be known for?

"If you want to put on a big sporting event then it needs facilities and those facilities are whatever you make of them afterwards - the Commonwealth Games is the opportunity to do that," said Boardman.

"I think a velodrome would be an asset for Birmingham but you would have to work at it, you would have to have a strategy around it to leverage it and link it in to other things going on in the area."

This weekend Boardman is opening the UK's first wind tunnel specifically built for cyclists, a project in Evesham in Worcestershire that has taken years to develop but under 12 months to build.

In his view, a new velodrome could be opened by 2022 if the will and money were in place to do it. "Four years is not long in building terms but it is certainly enough," he said.

Birmingham has had less time than usual to organise the games after Durban in South Africa dropped out of the running for 2022.

At Halesowen, one of the few outdoor cycling tracks in the West Midlands, 14-year-old cyclist Kinga Ingram explained to Sky News the difficulties of not having an indoor facility locally.

Having only taken up the sport two years ago, Kinga is already ranked fifth in the country for her age group and has a realistic chance of making the England squad for the 2022 Games in her home city.

She told Sky News: "It is two hours to get to Derby or Newport and you are sat in the car after a hard training session for two hours cramped up and it just causes injury.

"You are getting home late, you are tired at school... I had a really nasty injury myself from travelling in the car a lot and having late nights and not enough sleep, and I tore my hamstring and it took me out for three months."

In a recent open letter, cycling legend and commentator Hugh Porter from Wolverhampton urged the authorities to reconsider.

He wrote: "I call upon Birmingham City Council, British Cycling and other decision makers to revisit the decision not to build an indoor velodrome in Birmingham and to make it possible for the people of the West Midlands to enjoy the many benefits of having their own indoor velodrome."

Halesowen Cycling Club chairman David Viner told Sky News it was a "golden opportunity" that was being missed by games organisers to open up cycling to deprived and diverse communities in the West Midlands.

He said: "All we are saying for cycling is to be treated with the same respect with which athletics is being treated, or swimming or other sports.

"To have the track cycling in London makes the track cycling a total irrelevance as far as the Commonwealth Games is concerned... the Birmingham Commonwealth Games."

A Birmingham 2022 spokesperson said: "We have yet to formally announce the complete Birmingham 2022 sports and venue line up. We anticipate doing this in the coming months.

"When deciding on venues and locations for all sports, a full and rigorous evaluation has been carried out, looking at existing local venues, followed by an examination of regional venues where suitable local options do not exist, and finally any facilities further afield where there are no local or regional options.

"As part of its bid process Birmingham explored other regional velodrome options as well as new and temporary facilities, but the options were neither compliant nor economically viable.

"We hope that the existing velodromes in the UK, including Derby Arena, are able to play a role as training venues."