The Royal Showgrounds in Pietermaritzburg will be hosting the pinnacle of BMX racing from July 29 to August 1 in 2010, but logistics mean that the ground-breaking temporary track will put together in just eight days with very little room for error.
The track has been designed by the UCI and all the building work will be handled by UCI track builders Tom Ritzenthaler and Kyle Michell under the watchful eye of Technical Delegate John Lindstrom.
South Africa’s National Track Design Co-ordinator Eugene Eggar has the massive responsibility of making sure the international delegation have everything they need to produce the world-class facility. “We have to organise everything they need to make the track,” said Eggar yesterday. “We have to get all the sand, machinery and materials they need before they arrive and make sure we have machinery operators to work with them. It is a tough logistical operation … for example we have to get five and a half thousand cubic metres of sand into the Royal Showgrounds. We have at least 10 trucks carting all the sand but we have to come in and dump the sand at night so as not to disrupt the Pietermaritzburg traffic. We dump the sand and get everything ready for them to start when they arrive on July 19, and then they have eight days to build the complete track.”
The main Elite track has an eight metre high start ramp that is 10 metres wide and 26 metres long and leads to a 385m track littered with jumps, including one over the top of the Challenge track. The Challenge track has a five metre high start ramp and the course is 355m.
UCI technical delegate Johan Lindstrom was in Pietermaritzburg last month for a final briefing ahead of the World Championships. After a gruelling 24 hours of meetings and inspections of the Royal Showgrounds venue and facilities, he was positive that the event would be top-class.
“The track will be one of a kind,” enthused Lindstrom after inspecting the venue. “Never before have we built a course that will have two separate start ramps, and the track will be technically difficult and demanding.”
For Eggar the stress does not end once the riders get onto the track and begin training on July 26.
The event organisers are trying to source a plot of land so they can transfer the soil and materials used in the World Championship track and build a permanent international standard track as a legacy from the World Championships.
The UCI BMX World Championships takes place at the Royal Showgrounds in Pietermaritzburg from 29 July to 1 August.
More information can be found at bmxworldchampspmb
One can state that South Africans have become used to sparkling new sports facilities with the World Cup soccer bringing a host of shiny new stadia which were ready months before the kickoff. But for the organisers of the UCI BMX World Championships next month the building of their unique track has to be a tense last-minute rush. The track will be the first of its kind and is actually two tracks in one! There is the World Championships track for Elite riders and the slightly easier track for the World Challenge age group racing.
After doing a BMX 'zine for ten years (1987 - 1996) FATBMX made it on the internet. The year was 1998. Here to stay.