Well, well...the missus and I popped to the Olympic Velodrome in London last evening for the first day of a new six-day cycling event. I booked this out of curiosity more than anything, and because it was my birthday on Saturday, so I thought it made a nice bookend for the festivities.
I'm not much of a lad for track cycling really, despite having ridden the boards myself occasionally. I do watch it, but I'm primarily a road cyclist have always looked upon the track as the road's boss-eyed, simpleton sister. That all changed last night.
I hadn't had any great hope for the evening, but the tickets weren't that expensive, so even if it were shite, I reasoned, we could bail out after an hour or so and go to the pub. However, it was riveting - absolutely compelling. From start to finish, I could not drag my eyes from the spectacle. I had to force myself to answer the call of nature at one point, but other than that, I stayed glued to my seat.
It's usually the case that televised sport is better than the same event in the flesh. Football, rugby, cricket, road cycling - all of them are better served by television than by the empirical evidence of one's eyes. Not so track cycling - it's so much better when you're there. It's easier to follow; you also get the impression of the very real speed and danger inherent in the disciplines. I was hooked by the end of the show, no question. I'm now furiously trying to organise a trip to the continent to see one of the older, more-established six-days. The two on the shortlist thus far are Berlin and Copenhagen. We'll have to see how the flights work out etc. Over there, six-days are basically a wafer-thin excuse for a piss-up - a nightclub with a bike race in the middle of it. And it's as much fun as that sounds.
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