Track cycling doesn’t have much history in India. Even though youngsters like Ronaldo Singh, David Beckham, Rojit Singh and Esow Alben have done well in their disciplines and as a team in the recent past, India couldn’t earn enough qualification points for the Olympics 2024.
India had a mid-table finish in each of the track cycling qualification events rankings – sprint, keirin, pursuit, madison, and omnium – and hence couldn’t find itself on the plane to Paris for the recently held Games.
“Covid played a role. The training was nearly stopped for more than a year,” Onkar Singh, Asian Cycling Confederation Secretary General, said, adding that it affected the morale of several athletes, who he had to talk to and bring them back to the racetrack.
However, India’s quest for Olympic qualification in cycling has been a long journey, and plenty of work needs to be done on the grassroots level.
According to Jacques Landry, Director of Union Cycliste Internationale World Cycling Centre (UCI WCC), for India to get a foothold in cycling, the federation should focus on the development of BMX – racing and freestyle – due to its minimal investment and less infrastructure requirement.
According to Landry, non-traditional cycling countries should start with disciplines younger than track and road racing, which have been around for over 100 years.
“It’s an opportunity for these countries to grab hold of their own culture, build it, work within, and be part of the growing culture of that discipline in that sport,” Landry told Sportstar.
Given that BMX infrastructure doesn’t cost as much as building a velodrome, accessible parks and pump tracks can help gain popularity “for very little investment.”
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“I think these disciplines are more reliant on physical and technical attributes rather than so much on tactical, which takes more time to acquire.”
Born sprinters
Another factor to consider is the short turnaround of power-based and explosive disciplines like BMX and sprint. Landry says endurance-based disciplines like mountain racing and road cycling, take a long time to acquire skill set and technical proficiency, “but sprinters are sprinters.”
Jacques Landry is a former Olympian from Canada having participated in the road race event at the Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996 Games. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
“You have it all to do with the number of fast twitch muscles you’re born with versus slow twitch. And you can convert fast twitch to slow twitch, but you can’t convert slow twitch to fast,” Landry, a former Olympian (road race in Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996) from Canada, said.
Development projects
The UCI has communicated the idea of developing a cycling culture from a competitive standpoint via these disciplines to the Cycling Federation of India (CFI). The world cycling body has also assured the sending of experts to help with infrastructure projects to match international standards.
“In terms of BMX, if that is to be expanded, then we would have experts that can help with the design of the tracks because I know there are discussions to have a BMX track built in Patiala,” Landry said.
The director of UCI WCC added that when the development begins, they will collaborate with the federation to ensure the tracks are of international standards.
“We want to ensure that infrastructures and the installations are being built of a certain standard. So, it’s less of a gap to fill when they go to international competition.”
“Yes, we have had this conversation with UCI, and I have even communicated this further to the Sports Ministry,” Onkar said about the development of BMX in India.
“I have had talks with the Tamil Nadu government to build a BMX track in its upcoming sports project in Chennai; it is sanctioned. Talks are going on in Kolkata and Uttarakhand (Haldwani), also related to developing a track.”
“UCI is all in to support us with the BMX development,” Onkar added.
Apart from BMX tracks, there are 16 velodromes pan-India including upcoming projects in Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Kolkata, and Haldwani.
Diversify
India’s sprint team, which includes Ronaldo, David, Rojit and Esow, has been on the rise. The quartet clocked 44.609 seconds at the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2023 to break the national record before bettering it at the Asian Championships with a timing of 44.451.
With Kevin Sireau, a multiple Olympic and World Championship medallist from France, also joining as a coach, it is safe to say India has prioritised sprint as its go-to discipline for the Olympics.
Even though Landry lauded India’s development in the discipline, he said that talent identification needs to be more diverse and hence the development of BMX becomes even more important.
“At the end of the day, sprint might not be a discipline on the junior side of things. The track sprint and team sprint - the depth of field is not as great as it is with the elites. When you start getting into the elites, it gets tricky. So, the idea is not to put all the eggs in the sprint basket, so to speak, and try to diversify a bit,” Landry, a former high-performance coach of Canada and New Zealand, explained.
Compete More
Indian athletes participate in nearly 10-12 competitions throughout the year including world events that get them Olympic qualification points and three national championships.
However, for India to prepare for the 2028 Olympics, the athletes need to compete more, Landry asserted. “You need to have a good racing calendar within the country,” he said.
“When you look down the road at Los Angeles, the first goal should be to focus on qualification. But qualification also means you can’t prepare in a vacuum and expect to come out and be competitive. You have to go out of the country and go on the racing circuit,” Landry opined.
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