‘I haven’t really got a clue what’s going on with the racing. Every now and then we hear a bell so we watch the race ending. Then we just get back to drinking.’
This might sound like something you’d overhear from a spectator witnessing their first track race, and indeed it is: overheard by Tony Gibb, joint founder and director of the London 3 Day, which held its inaugural event at the Lee Valley Velodrome in October. Gibb is a former racer himself and no stranger to the chaotic environment of the velodrome.
‘I rode for Great Britain for six years from 2000. I got a silver medal at the Worlds, a bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games and I actually won a small six day in 2005,’ Gibb tells Cyclist. ‘So, yeah, I’ve mixed it with them out there.’
Multi-day track racing combines numerous events – madison, points race, elimination, derny racing, and so on – with a party atmosphere fuelled by loud music and copious amounts of beer. As a spectacle it may be past its heyday, but across Europe there are still annual multi-day events in Berlin, Rotterdam, Bremen and the mother of them all, Ghent.
For a few years London had a six-day event that featured British luminaries such as Mark Cavendish, Bradley Wiggins and Peter Kennaugh, but it wound up in 2019 and since then track cycling events have been on something of a hiatus in the UK. Which is where Gibb and his Full Gas Cycling organisation comes in.
‘We organise everything from grass roots racing and Tuesday night track league through to the Good Friday UCI event and the World Masters Track Championships,’ says Gibb. ‘Even with the contacts we have access to, we knew six days was a bit too much. It was year one so we didn’t have a massive budget. Thankfully the UCI were fantastic, as were the many volunteers that don’t want the six-day scene to die.’
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Tracked changes
For Gibb, the track, and specifically this scene, offers a totally different environment for the riders, especially compared to the game-faced sterility we see on the road.
‘They’re dead serious, they’re focussed, I get that they are there to win but it’s really nice to see these riders understand that there’s also a crowd to entertain. It’s a party atmosphere.’
But getting the riders on board – stony faced or otherwise – is as much about your Rolodex as it is your organisational skills.
‘I raced alongside guys like Roger Kluge, Elia Viviani, Yoeri Havik and Bradley Wiggins, and I’m fortunate enough to have their phone numbers. Of course, you’ve got to pay people because you’re selling tickets off their names. Viviani sorted out the rest of the Italians and it really fell into place when the Italian women’s team won at the Olympics.’
Because of the timing of the event (just after the World Championships) and the nature of the sport, it’s also teed up for things to go wrong. And at very late notice.
‘There’s every chance someone’s going to break a collarbone or get Covid on the plane,’ says Gibb. ‘You’ve already got graphics made for the big screen and programmes printed. You can’t even really have standbys just sitting at home waiting by the phone.’
Not that any of that will stop the party, although Gibb admits it’s hard to recreate the booze-fuelled atmosphere of the legendary Ghent Six.
‘You’re never going to replicate Ghent – it’s the Monaco of cycling. Lee Valley is in a residential area and we’ve got to be out by 10.30pm, so there’s no rolling on to 2am like in Bremen or Berlin.’
There’s also the shape of the track. Ghent’s track is a lot smaller than Lee Valley, its banking is steeper, so the fans are closer and louder, the racing is faster and the crashes can be more spectacular.
‘The alternative is hiring a great big hall and building the track in it,’ says Gibb, ‘which is going to cost you £1 million. We’ve got our own little bit of history at Lee Valley and I wouldn’t dream of changing that.’
Going global
October’s event attracted riders from all over the world. Just as they did in 2019, Italians Viviani and Simone Consonni won the madison, but left it very late, edging out Kluge and Theo Reinhardt and pushing Havik and Ben Wiggins (son of Brad) into third.
Elsewhere, head aero swot Alex Dowsett made the most of his eye-catching setup to win the derny race, while Olympic champions Vittoria Guazzini and Chiara Consonni won the women’s madison finale, resplendent on their golden bikes.
For Gibb, some of the highlights came off the track, where big names were floating around.
‘The queues to get a picture with Brad were unbelievable. In the end we had to get security to close the line off. And with Viviani, he said this will be the only winter track race that he does, and he will do it for as long as he’s riding.’
In terms of British names they don’t get much bigger than Mark Cavendish, and Gibb wasn’t too shy to ask.
‘We’d love to have Cav riding. I must have sent him about 20 messages but obviously the guy’s very busy at the minute. He was doing the Singapore Crit [where he won the final race of his career] and a few other bits, so the stars didn’t quite align.’
Coming round again
As well as a few big name dropouts – Olympic gold medallist Katie Archibald dislocated her shoulder on day one – Gibb admits there were teething problems, often in unexpected areas.
‘Lee Valley has one light switch and it’s either on or off. For creating an atmosphere, that’s not ideal.’
But with one event under the belt now, and the experience that comes with that, Gibb thinks the track ahead should be pretty smoothly banked.
‘Anyone can sit down in front of someone with a nice PowerPoint presentation. But our event, it’s real now. We’ve got a thing. We’ve got our own footage. We’ve got our own photos. That changes the game.’
To find out more about this year’s event, go to london3day.com
• This article originally appeared in issue 159 of Cyclist magazine. Click here to subscribe
