Bike racing on steroids

So for our first Saturday in Bonn in a long time, what do we do? We drive up to Dortmund, of course. Saturday night, Jim and I went up to Dortmund to watch Colby (Jim’s friend) compete in a 6 day track bike race.

I’ve never been to a track bike race so it was interesting to see what it was all about. The track is on a 45% angle at the corners. From what I was able to gather, this is a team sport with two people on a team. The riders go at full speed – 75k an hour and trade off every couple of laps. Because the track bikes have no breaks and only one gear, the riders grab the hand of their teammate and sling them into the group of racers to get them up to speed when they switch places. Surprisingly, there weren’t any crashes while we were watching. I was getting dizzy just watching them zip around the track.

According to Colby, the significance of 6 days of racing comes from years ago when the race actually was a 6 day nonstop race. Apparently when racers started dying, they scaled back the races to 6 hours or so.
Track bike racing is like a bike race on steroids. I haven’t ever been to a monster truck rally, but I got the feeling that it might be a lot like a track bike race. You have your cheesy motivating 80s music - like the soundtrack to Top Gun along with lots of flashing lights. There was even a band in the middle of the track with lots of VIPs hanging out.

There were a lot of other venues set up in the same arena in conjunction with the bike race. They had different rooms with a laser light show, disco, live music and rooms of food and drink vendors all as part of this 6 day race. My guess is there isn’t a whole lot going on in Dortmund so this becomes a major event.

Colby and his teammate were the only Americans in the race. I don’t think track bike racing is as popular in the US as it is here. Here, the star German rider (Erik Zabel) is treated like a rock star.

One of the events was a Derney race. I’m not sure who came up with this one, but I’m guessing there were some head injuries involved. A Derney bike is a motorized pacing bike. The rider puts his wheel up to a metal bar on the pacing bike so that he eliminates drag and can go even faster. The best part about this race is watching the two guys who won take their victory lap. I don’t think the gray haired, slightly chubby guy who drove the Derney motorbike is much of a cyclist so it was pretty comical watching him take a lap on a regular bicycle.