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Training through a Swiss winter – Le Vélodrome Tony Rominger à Genève

Club member Ian Collins recently moved to Geneva. Since then, he's ridden some of the sport's greatest routes. In his third article, having ridden over some of the sport's summer landmarks, Ian heads indoors to ride his bike.

One of the great things about the Switzerland is that the sports facilities are superb. 50m swimming pools, running tracks, tennis courts and football pitches are all in abundance and, even more heartening, they are always packed out with people enjoying themselves. In fact, I have heard organisers of professional sports events moaning that the Swiss would much rather go out and play sport rather than pay to watch others doing it, however good they may be.

As far as cycling goes, Geneva is blessed with a velodrome in the centre of town. As the snow starts to fall and the temperature drops, you can still maintain your condition down at the track – it makes a nice change from the turbo trainer and getting wet and cold outside.

I have to say I was apprehensive about trying out the track, especially since you have to ride a bike with a fixed wheel and no brakes. However, having delayed too long in joining a cycling club in England (because I thought I wasn’t “good enough”) and then deeply regretting not having done so earlier, I thought I should give it a shot in case I loved it.

The resident coach runs what he calls “initiations” every other Wednesday night and so one evening in early October, I turned up early to have a try. To those of you who have not seen a velodrome in the flesh, I would advise trying to get along to one. The steepness of the banked turns is really quite something. All I could think of as I stood there was “wall of death”! I was scared witless to be honest and even texted one of the Wheelers for a bit of moral support. But it was too late to turn back and I was soon being handed an old track bike and told to listen to the coach’s briefing. I have a little French but I was more than a bit nervous of failing to understand one crucial piece of the briefing that would result in me coming to an untimely end. But then again the summary of the advice seemed to be to ride smoothly and fast and not to do anything too suddenly. With that I was away, with the coach behind me yelling encouragement and hints. The first thing you have to get used to is the fact that if the wheel is turning, either forwards or backwards, the pedals must turn too. Not much of a revelation to all you out there, I am sure, but it makes even getting clicked into your pedals a touch more tricky as you try to suppress the desire to stop pedalling while you fit your feet in.

Nevertheless, I was soon up and running and gliding round the bottom of the track, trying to pick up speed. Before long the coach was telling me to move onto the track proper (the banking starts virtually from the bottom) and within 2 minutes I was between the two bottom lines marked out round the circumference, trying to keep it smooth. It was then time to move up to the blue line marking the midway point of the width of the track, which meant going round the banked turns at a seemingly impossible angle. But centrifugal force is a wonderful thing and as long as you go fast enough (which didn’t seem to be a problem), you just seem to stick to the track, no matter high up you go.

I was well chuffed with myself and could start to relax a bit. Next up was a bit of practice in a pace-line. Again, nothing a club cyclist would worry about ordinarily except I was used to being able to freewheel or even brake when I got too close to the person in front. Neither were now options. The only way to slow down was to go slightly higher up the banking, thereby increasing the distance round the track. It was no good easing off the pedals (but still turning them) because you would quickly lose contact with the rider in front and hear abuse from behind you. Once or twice I got too close and had to go up the banking – all very well in theory but not too pleasant when there is a faster rider overtaking the pace-line as well as the front guy moving up to return to the back of the group. It can get pretty congested and at least on one occasion my automatic reaction was to stop pedalling to help me manoeuvre. At this point, the bike wobbled violently and my legs got a severe crunching as the cranks forced them round involuntarily. Everything was fine as long as I concentrated...

Following the initiation, I joined the velodrome for the year for around £60 – that gives you pretty much unlimited time there and it is open seven days a week, with at least one period each day when training is open to all. I even managed to convince the family treasurer to sanction the purchase of a simple track bike despite her incredulity as to why I couldn’t just ride one of my other bikes on the track. So I’ve been going along for a few sessions, mostly in the day while I “consider my employment options in Switzerland”. Amazingly enough, whenever I go there are plenty of people there. At lunchtimes, lots come from work to have an hour’s session while in the afternoons, the old retired guys take over. These guys are often quite fat but don’t be fooled, they can ride. A lot still shave their legs and try as I might, there are plenty I just have no hope of dropping. You soon get into ad hoc pace-lines at around your standard – the old boys I often see there let me do huge pulls on the front while they just do a couple of laps but even so, it is a bit humbling to know that despite their ages and beer bellies these guys are pretty much at your standard!

There are lots of track races organised but I’m definitely not ready to enter any yet – the standard of riding round here is intimidating and every now and again I go onto autopilot and nearly come to grief as I try to freewheel etc. I even managed to lock up the back wheel and skid down the bank the other week! But I will go along to the “3 jours de Genève” meeting to see what the debutant standard is like. You never know – after all, I joined Kingston Wheelers with few if any real notions of road racing and within a month had done my first.