The relatively obscure discipline of track racing is always looking for new eyeballs on the sport, but not like this.
The horrific crash at the final round of the UCI’s Track Champions League series, at Lee Valley Velodrome last weekend went almost instantly viral on social media (one clip on YouTube has over 123,000 views) and made news even in mainstream media outlets, often as crash porn (Yahoo Sports’ cringe-inducing headline was “Watch: Britain’s Katy Marchant breaks arm in terrifying collision”).
But the crash, which broke Marchant’s right radius and ulna bones (lower arm) and dislocated two fingers while inflicting less-serious injuries on Alessa-Catriona Pröpster and four fans after the two riders went up and over the barriers into the crowd, has also spurred a wave of questions about track safety.
In last Sunday’s crash, Pröpster and Marchant were battling for position in the last lap of a first-round Keirin heat when they appeared to somehow become locked together while entering a corner. Momentum then carried the pair up into and over the barriers right at the apex, where they crashed into a group of fans seated trackside. Organizers ultimately cancelled the rest of the races.
It’s the second incident of that type recently at the Lee Valley Velodrome, which was built for the 2012 London Olympics; in 2022 Matt Walls and Derek Gee were involved in a similar up-and-over crash at the Commonwealth Games, which left a spectator with a serious laceration injury. And it came in just the second event since Lee Valley officials – partly in response to that crash – fitted the velodrome with new, taller Perspex barriers to a height of 1.4 meters, at a reported cost of £250,000.
In a brief public post, the UCI and other stakeholders said they were working “to review the incident before taking appropriate action.”
Crashes in mass-start track racing are relatively common. While deaths – like Isaac Gálvez’s – are thankfully few and far between, serious injuries can and do result. Earlier this year in round two of the Track Champions League the men’s elimination race saw a serious mass crash. And Keirin – which originated in Japan as a parimutuel sport and features physical contact as an integral part – is particularly prone to falls.
A freak coincidence or something more
But Lee Valley’s role in both the Commonwealth and TCL incidents raises the question of whether it was simply bad luck that saw two serious over-the-barriers crashes here in 28 months of racing or what role track design and other factors play. The UCI’s regulations on track racing allow for velodromes as short as 133 meters or as long as 500 meters, but for World Championships and Olympic Games the required distance is set at 250 meters. Functionally, that means any velodrome that hopes to host an international competition must be 250 meters.
The homologation rules for velodromes are extremely precise in some aspects – the track surface can vary no more than 5 mm in height across a two-meter section, for instance, and the longitudinal stripes marking aspects like the stayers’ line must be an exact width of 5 cm. But other regulations are less exact.
For outside fencing, UCI rules (3.6.087) specify that a fence must be stable and solidly mounted, with an overall height of at least 90 cm, a minimum of 65 cm of which is smooth and unbroken. In practice, that often means a wall board of 65 cm topped by a single metal railing at 90 cm. That common design has factored in at least one serious crash, when Malaysian racer Dahlia Hazwani Hashim caught an arm in the barrier railing at the 2023 Junior World Track Championships in Cali, Colombia.
If a velodrome features areas adjacent to the outside barrier that are 1.5 meters or more below the edge of the track surface, the UCI says that “additional protective measures (nets, panels, etc.) must be provided to reduce the risks resulting from riders accidentally leaving the track.”
But the rules are silent on design specifications for those additional protective measures. And that rule only holds if there’s a fall potential of greater than 2.4 meters if riders go over the barriers. At tracks like Lee Valley, fans are seated trackside even at corners, and the existing barrier rules don’t offer any additional protection for spectators. Additionally, while an Olympic-standard 250-meter track’s bend radius must fall within a 19-25 meter range, there is no standard requirement on banking steepness (Lee Valley has a maximum banking of 42°.)
Those variations are not exclusive to UCI regulations; in Japan, Keirin velodromes range from 250-meter indoor tracks like Kokura velodrome in Fukuoka (an older, outdoor velodrome at Kokura held the first-ever Keirin race) to 400-meter outdoor tracks at Tachikawa and Gifu, and all of them feature different banking steepness and outer barriers of varying heights and even materials (Tachikawa’s includes a chain-link fence).
The UCI’s minimum 90 cm barrier height – which is roughly at handlebar height on a drop-bar sprint bike used in mass-start racing – may well be too low. A rider’s center of gravity, as determined by seat and bar height, is typically above that 90 cm line. It was a similar criticism – leveled by Sir Chris Hoy and Laura Kenny after the 2022 Commonwealth Games crash – that spurred Lee Valley to increase its barriers to 1.4 meters high. Kenny said the Commonwealth crash was the third time she had personally seen riders go over the top of a barrier.
But even 1.4-meter barriers didn’t prevent riders from going over the top last Sunday, which raises the question of whether they need to be higher yet and whether other elements of track design – notably distance and banking angle – may play contributing roles in over-the-barrier crashes, especially at modern track racing speeds.
A 250-meter velodrome has a tighter radius in the bends than a longer track of, say, the former Olympic standard of 333 meters, which means higher centrifugal force on the riders, and a higher likelihood of hitting the outside barriers in a crash. Shorter tracks also necessarily have a steeper banking, which means that, in corners, riders who crash into the outside barrier make contact at a more obtuse angle and are more likely to slide up and possibly over the barriers.
All of that suggests that taller barriers – even higher than 1.4 meters – may be necessary to prevent further over-the-top style crashes. That’s especially key at a velodrome like Lee Valley, where spectator seating is wrapped tight to the track to maximize capacity (3,500), and is continuous around the entire circumference.
One final question remains: Marchant was riding Team GB’s Hope track bike with the wide-stance fork legs and seat stays. Sources told Escape Collective that, when the bike was first trialled in 2021, there was concern about a higher likelihood of contact-caused crashes.
Although Marchant and Pröpster appear to be locked together as they approach the barrier, it’s not clear how that happened, and sources told Escape that there’s no direct evidence the Hope bike played a role. As for what changes could or will be made to reduce the likelihood of further crashes, it’s unknown – neither Lee Valley officials nor the UCI responded to Escape’s request for comment.
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