Sport

Groundbreaking track for BMX Worlds

25 June 2010

South Africans have become used to sparkling new sports facilities, with the Fifa World Cup delivering a host of world-class stadiums months ahead of schedule, but the organisers of the 2010 UCI BMX World Championships will have just eight days to assemble a one-of-a-kind track in host city Pietermaritzburg.

The city's Royal Showgrounds will host the pinnacle of BMX racing from 29 July to 1 August, but logistics mean that putting up the ground-breaking temporary track will be a tense, last-minute affair, with little room for error.

The track has been designed by the UCI, world cycling's governing body, and all the building work will be handled by UCI track builders Tom Ritzenthaler and Kyle Bennett under the watchful eye of UCI technical delegate John Lindstrom.

Massive responsibility

South Africa's national track design co-ordinator, Eugene Eggar, has the massive responsibility of making sure the international delegation have everything they need to produce the world-class facility.

"We have to organise everything they need to make the track," Eggar said on Thursday. "We have to get all the sand, machinery and materials they need before they arrive, and make sure we have machinery operators to work with them.

"It is a tough logistical operation. For example, we have to get 5 500 cubic metres of sand into the Royal Showgrounds. We have at least 10 trucks carting all the sand, but we have to come in and dump the sand at night so as not to disrupt the Pietermaritzburg traffic.

"We dump the sand and get everything ready for them to start when they arrive on 19 July, and then they have eight days to build the complete track."

First of its kind

The track will be the first of its kind and is actually two tracks in one. There is the World Championships track for Elite riders and the slightly easier track for the World Challenge age-group racing.

The main Elite track has an eight-metre-high start ramp that is 10 metres wide and 26 metres long and leads to a 385m track littered with jumps, including one over the top of the Challenge track. The Challenge track has a five-metre-high start ramp and the course is 355 metres long.

UCI technical delegate Johan Lindstrom was in Pietermaritzburg last month for a final briefing ahead of the World Championships. After a gruelling 24 hours of meetings and inspections of the Royal Showgrounds venue and facilities, he was positive that the event would be top-class.

"The track will be one of a kind," Lindstrom said after inspecting the venue.

Two separate start ramps

"Never before have we built a course that will have two separate start ramps, and the track will be technically difficult and demanding."

For Eggar, the stress does not end once the riders get onto the track and begin training on 26 July.

The event organisers are trying to source a plot of land so they can transfer the soil and materials used in the World Championship track and build a permanent international standard track as a legacy from the World Championships.

"We are hoping that Ritzenthaler and Bennett will stay on after the World Champs and build the new track if we can find a venue," said Eggar.

"We have some great tracks in South Africa, but it would be a fantastic boost to have them design a permanent course which could be used to develop the sport in the future."

For a host of young BMX enthusiasts a new track could be just the incentive they need to emulate their heroes they will be seeing in action from 29 July and, who knows, the 2020 world champion could rise out of the soil of the 2010 track.

SAinfo reporter