It's fair to say that I am a bit of an Olympics-skeptic, mostly due to the effective exclusion of a vast proportion of people who have been told that an Olympic park will be built where they live, but they're not likely to get tickets for anything. In fact the people most guaranteed tickets are corporate sponsors which is not at all a people's event! Although the true measure of sucess of the Olympics is the legacy left behind and we have an amazing opportunity to offer this facility to the people, including young people who would be our cycling stars of the future! Unfortunately governments don't tend to think this way and while they celebrate success, they also tend to expect commercial organisations to provide the facilities to enable atheletes to 'represent their country'.
Anyhoo...I was very excited to snag some tickets for the London Prepares UCI Track Cycling World Cup at the new Olympic velodrome (though these had to by paid for using a particular card type and the vast majority of tickets had already been snapped up by politicians and corporate sponsors).
So in February I will be cycling down to the velodrome on my fixed-gear bicycle to watch some of my cycling heros riding theirs! I'm extremely excited, not only to see cyclists whom I very much admire but to see the facilities too. I only hope that one day I get the chance to cycle around the track too. Of course, this would be for an 'open' event rather than a race; I'm no Victoria Pendleton! Although I have tried to do some digging around with people like the Lea Valley authority, British Cycling and the Olympic Delivery Agency but I've not really got much information about exactly what is planned for the velodrome after the games. One reply was "I'm not sure..."
These photos are from Jack999's Flickr stream, used non-commercially under Creative Commons licensing:
Aerial shots of the velodrome and the BMX track can also be seen on on the London 2012 site:
Have to admit, it looks absolutely amazing!