Thanks Bill, great stuff.
Anyone know what became of the track from inside the Montreal velodrome? I thought it was some rare African wood, and I vaguely remember it was dissassembled and sold in the early 80's, as debt piled up after the '76 olympics. The roof of the stadium is the shape of a classic leather hair net if I recall, but I don't know what the space is used for now.
Grant McLean Toronto.Ca
Bill McGehee: THE VIGORELLI "was an outdoor velodrome, it was semi-covered to lessen the effects of the wind. Its lightning surface was made of 2" by 2' slats of twenty foot long pine boards cut piece by piece from the centers of trunks of trees grown in a particular stand of Russian pine deep in Siberia.
There, the pine grew slowly, making the wood more dense and practically
without knots or splinters. A racing surface of this kind of wood was
as firm and as smooth as could be created. Racers could use the lightest
possible tires and, when Milan's air was still and dry in September, the
combination created ideal conditions for setting records."
Source: Winning March 1984
Bill,
F.B., Ga