I have just come off the track for the final time on my first night of Track League racing at South London’s Herne Hill Velodrome and have tuned in to the renowned commentary stylings of Phil Wright, over the tinny pitch-side PA.
I have not lit up the track, but nor have I struggled too hard to hold the wheels.
I wasn’t ever among the top positions, but I managed to come away with one of the jerseys awarded as a prize for sneaking a prime [awarded for intermediate sprints] in the final points race.
More meaningfully, I’ve been welcomed, by Joe, Rob, Swanny, Pete and the rest, into the band of ragtag riders known as 'the Cs', one of the myriad groups that help form the wider HHV community.
Wright’s rascally, wry, irreverent remark to the neighbours reflects not only a love for this place that everyone here wears on their Lycra sleeves, but a confidence in its continuity.
Seventeen years ago, the 132-year-old venue was in serious trouble.
The track itself was in a state of disrepair, and the leisure partners charged with its management didn’t see its potential and were failing to invest in its upkeep.
When the lease came up, the land owners, the Dulwich Estate, refused to renew it.
As the velodrome’s current head coach, John Scripps, describes it, the freeholders decided it was “either going to be run properly or not at all”.
99 problems but the lease ain’t one
Not at all was, for a while, where things were headed. For a year until August 2005, the gates were shut. That existential threat stirred the locals, inspiring the birth of the Save the Velodrome campaign which, ultimately, achieved just that.
Thanks to British Cycling, and a generous bequest, funding was secured for the necessary resurfacing of the track, in-fill of track centre, floodlights and other physical infrastructure.
That was sufficient assurance for the freeholders to grant the velodrome a 99-year lease on the land.
Velo Club Londres, the racing-focused team most closely associated with the velodrome, temporarily took over its management before handing over responsibility to the newly established Herne Hill Velodrome Trust in 2017.
Then, a little over three years ago, the velodrome was again wobbling; by most assessments failing to live up to its potential. The pandemic didn’t help matters, but it did at least offer the opportunity for a reset.
Today, tails are most assuredly up. Across the board, attendance is through the roof.
Managing director Iain Cook, three years into his tenure, and many more into his lifelong relationship with cycling, points to a figure of 28,000 paid entrants for 2022 and says that because this only counts for publicly bookable sessions, the true total will be almost twice that.
Turnover is also nearly double pre-Covid levels.
Rather than a venerable institution, Herne Hill Velodrome now feels like a dynamic start-up.
Last October, in an article featuring several of the local riders who have recently reached the top tier of cycling, The Times called Herne Hill Velodrome “the engine of British cycling”.
And on the not-infrequent occasions any of young pros Fred Wright, Flora Perkins, Ethan and Leo Hayter, or Thomas Gloag return to the SE24 track, they can expect to be mobbed by young autograph hunters.
But the wider Herne Hill community takes at least as much pride in what the velodrome is doing away from the glare of Grand Tours and World Championships.
The same might even be said of Wright himself, as happy as he is to identify as the dad of Fred, a men’s WorldTour rider with Bahrain-Victorious. Cook refers to Wright as Herne Hill’s “keeper of the community culture".
Wright prefers to call himself “a velodrome junkie” and says: “I love commentating, I love making coffee, I love coaching a little bit. I love riding the derny [cycle-pacing vehicle] and I love tandem piloting.”
He does this for local disabled cycling charity, Wheels for Wellbeing, who run three sessions a week on the track.
More than an outdoor gym, Wright says, “It’s a place for people to come and be social. While pretending to be riding a bike, you’re actually hanging out with people.
"It reminds me of being in the sixth form at school, where you’d walk into the common room and know everybody.”
All or nothing
While VCL’s red, white and blue kits remain the most visible at many events, they’ve been joined by the colours of numerous other local squads, including Velociposse, a club for “all women, all trans and all non-binary people in London”.
Feodora Rayner, Velociposse member and regular racer, says: “Herne Hill Velodrome is invaluable for us as a place where it’s safe to ride a bike, and safe to ride a bike fast.”
British Cycling’s announcement in May that transgender women would not be permitted to compete in the ‘female’ category, regardless of testosterone levels or other medical indicators, was viewed by many as going against that ethos.
“There were quite a few of us, across the whole velodrome, who were really quite appalled by that policy decision,” says Rayner.
At the next velodrome event, she positioned a trans flag behind the judges’ desk. In a sport as dominated by the white, monied and male as cycling tends to be – and often with the entitled attitudes to match – Herne Hill aspires to more.
It “tries to make cycling into something fun rather than something necessarily competitive, or it makes competition fun,” says Rayner.
Flora Perkins, who came through the VCL performance pathway and now competes for Belgian Continental outfit Fenix-Deceuninck, agrees: “From a young age you’re encouraged to find enjoyment in winning, but it’s not the be-all and end-all,” she says.
“When you first start out, especially as a girl, winning not being everything is great. I got into it because I made friends and I wanted to see my friends again, not particularly because I liked riding a bike.”
In 2022, female riders made up 29.5 per cent of all participants in sessions – roughly double the share who are members of British Cycling.
Although Herne Hill won’t be content until gender parity has been achieved, youth development officer, Tianne Bell, is pleased to report that “the weekly under-18 girls session is the most popular, and regularly sold out, or at the limit”.
Women also make up half of those on the payroll, all of whom know there’s more to diversity and inclusivity: race, age, culture, class and disability come into it too.
Reducing barriers to participation was one of the main areas cycling development manager Thea Smith was brought in to work on in 2019.
She sees her goal as to “just make as many people aware of this place as possible”. It’s about “making it better known that it’s affordable, that there are bikes to borrow, that you don’t need any pre-existing knowledge. You don’t even need to be able to ride a bicycle to come here”.
Indeed not. “Racing is a small proportion of what we do here,” says Smith.
Bell agrees: “It’s all about people coming to whichever kind of cycling they want to come to, at whatever level they want to come to, at whatever age they want to come to it.”
Or as Scripps sums it up: “The primary objective is about getting more people on bikes."
“Even if you can’t afford it, talk to us and we’ll see if we can work something out,” Bell adds.
As well as leading coaching sessions, her role involves reaching out to local schools “from all different backgrounds” and community groups, such as Together We Ride, whose own mission is to increase the participation and presence of people of colour within cycling.
“We’re getting there, but it’s going to take time,” Bell says.
All hands on deck
Scripps and Bell agree that the way the velodrome is formally organised is a major contributor to its current success.
“There’s no hierarchy,” says Bell. “Everybody coaches, does the menial tasks and answers emails.”
Scripps says it’s because they all understand the mission. That 'all' includes the charitable body that sits on top of the day-to-day operation. Cook strongly believes that the atypical way the velodrome is run helps: “It’s small and not reporting to anything other than a board of trustees,” he says.
“Everyone’s primary drive is wanting it to succeed. You can be agile and flexible, because you’re not fitting into processes defined by, say, a local council.”
Although there is the impression this may not always have been the case, 'the management', as Wright affectionately calls them, now maintain a wholly constructive relationship with the HHVT board.
“The point of the charity,” says Tim McInnes, chair of the trustees, “is to build the facility into a position whereby it achieves the charitable objective and generates a sufficient surplus.”
Among many other things, that surplus needs to be able to fund the track being relaid, and £800,000 is the current estimate for the cost of replacing the all-weather surface.
Although that war chest is topped up by proceeds from paying users, donations and grants, Rapha, the cycling apparel and lifestyle giant, has been a particularly benevolent benefactor in recent years.
As well as wholly funding the creation of Bell’s role three years ago, the company’s foundation paid to spruce up the entrance, re-tarmac the drive and paint a mural, in the velodrome’s trademark navy, turquoise, red, black and white.
McInnes goes as far to say that the velodrome “is in the healthiest place it’s been for many decades” and they don’t have to rely on unpaid labour – at least for the big things – now.
“The legacy of community and volunteering is one of its strengths,” he says, “but being run completely by volunteers meant that lots of it was done fairly amateurly.”
So the present is bright, but what about the future? Tim has grand visions of Herne Hill becoming the cycling equivalent of Battersea Dogs Home, which “managed to take what is essentially an animal shelter and turn it into a multi-site, internationally renowned facility for promoting animal welfare”.
Cook would like to put on bigger and better events, such as this summer’s South London Grand Prix. Held to mark the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Olympics, it was the first elite race meet to take place in Herne Hill for a decade.
Bell and Scripps mainly talk about it being busier, attracting people from more diverse backgrounds.
“If more WorldTour pros come out of the top, then fine,” Scripps says. “If none come out of the top, then fine.”
None of these aims are incompatible. All add up to the velodrome looking like it does now, doing what it already does so well, only more. “It’s quite hard to believe in a lot of stuff these days, but believing in this place is quite easy,” says Wright. “It is so obviously a good thing.”