Kissena Velodrome

Built in 1963 in Kissena Park, the Kissena Velodrome helped revive New York City’s role as a major bicycle racing center. After falling into disrepair, the track was renovated by the Department of Parks and Recreation in 2004 and it continues to be an important site for cyclists from the city, region, and beyond.

When John Campo, the angel of Kissena Velodrome, first drew our attention to his beloved oval bicycle racing track, the track lay in near ruins. Forty years of off-and-on maintenance and decades of urban disinvestment had left the track — and many other of the city’s great recreational facilities — floundering for care. Home-grown efforts had kept the track going, but now John and his friends were on the verge of a break-through. The City had agreed to renovate the track, and in April 2004, a new Kissena Velodrome unveiled itself to the biking world.

Resurrecting Racing in New York

The Kissena Velodrome is the only track built for cycling in the city, and the only velodrome around for hundreds of miles. Sized at a very respectable 400 meters, surfaced with asphalt, like all velodromes it has two long sections called “straights.” The straights are linked by curved sections at each end and the turns are “banked” (or curved), much like an auto race track. Whipping around those four turns at 30 to 40 miles an hour packed tight in a group of other racers requires skill and care — even with Kissena’s rather gentle banking and the help of centrifugal force. Before the track’s recent renovation, determined cyclists had to maneuver in packs over large bumps in the turns as well as gaping cracks in the asphalt, sprouting weeds in the cracks, and low hanging vegetation at the top of the bank, not to mention the occasional person, dog, ringed neck grouse, all- terrain vehicle — and once even police in pursuit of a robber — who popped out of the woods to find themselves in the middle of a race.

Things got very bad at Kissena in the years before renovation. Racers complained of a large speed bump at turn four that sent riders airborne if they took the turn at high speed. The first riders to arrive on any given day couldn’t just mount their bikes and take off. First they had to clear the track of junk that had shown up the night before. On more than one occasion riders encountered abandoned and burnt car hulks in the middle of the track.

Now, consider that track bikes have no brakes and their chains are constructed not to permit coasting. You would want optimum conditions on your track. No wonder many riders considered Kissena dangerous. Yet still they came.

Why did the Velodrome survive despite its deficits? One explanation is the love of track riding. For serious Olympic hopefuls, this was the only place to train. And New York is a place where bike messengers and guerilla riders have sustained an underground bike culture; in fact, bike messengers make up most of Kissena’s racers. But there also seems to have been an openness of spirit, and inclusiveness, at Kissena that allowed riders to thrive who would not have been welcomed elsewhere. Rider Kirk Whiteman, a member of the Kissena Cycling Club, said “What was cool about Kissena compared to other places in the country was that most of the people who raced at Kissena were not from the United States. And there were lots of people of color.” Kirk credits Al Toefield, the New York City police sergeant who helped to found both the Velodrome and the Kissena Cycling Club in the 1960s, with establishing a friendly environment. “The best thing about Al is that he was fair; he saw people for people.” (Al Toefield died in 1993.) John Campo agrees that upper echelon-racing is plagued by racism, so one of the things the Kissena Club has done over the years is recruit and encourage racers of color. Toefield supported a minority racing club named Squiggle, founded by Native American racer Anthony Van Dunk. And Whiteman, himself, riding in tandem with Vincent Oliver, won the national track championship in 1996 after training at Kissena — becoming two of only five Black national champions in the history of racing.

Today’s Kissena Velodrome is considered a state-of-the-art facility for amateur racers and is owned by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. But operating and professionally maintaining the track consumes the hours and private dollars of Velodrome volunteers. John Campo, a musician, writer, union woodworker, bike racer and coach maintains the track surface and other facilities. He and the newly formed Kissena Velodrome Committee manage the coaching and programs as well promote the races. Seven days a week, from morning through evening, cyclists circle the track; many of them wearing skinsuits branded with the names of their clubs and teams. During the day, the Velodrome is open to the public for free, and Saturday coaching is also free. Racing, reserved for the evenings, requires only minimal registration fees. There is messenger racing, public racing, pee-wee racing on tricycles, and junior racing (to pass the torch to the next generation), twilight racing (held for the last 41 years on Wednesdays from May through September), and several nights of coaching — including one night devoted to women. John ardently pursues all-comers to racing, and since his tenure as track director began in 2001 (he’s been racing there since 1984), has significantly expanded use of the track by male and female racers. To recruit new fans, the Kissena Cycling Club keeps a few loaner bikes on hand for visiting cyclists who would like to try track racing but don’t yet have a steed of their own.

While the racers speed around the track, fans loll in the bleachers, stand near the fence, or prop themselves up on their bikes. It’s a casual scene; parents and kids looking for after-dinner or weekend entertainment, parents cheering on their pee-wee racers, young teenagers hanging out. People seem to know each other; a lot of hands are shaken in greeting. But the atmosphere is welcoming to newcomers too. Part of the open feel may come from its location. Fringed with trees and wild grasses, surrounded by park and woods, the scale, like much of Queens, is low. Sky, space, grass, and a new, brilliantly black track create a little Velodrome-world-of-its-own; situated at one end of Kissena Park — an old 234-acre park, complete with newly-renovated lake and other amenities, that attaches via a corridor of green to the larger Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

Three Guys Had a Dream

The Kissena Park Siegfried Stern Memorial Velodrome opened in 1963. It gets its dignified name from its location in Kissena Park and from a businessman named Siegfried Stern who was one of the track’s first donors (and brother to the founder of Hartz Mountain Products). The origins of the track are slightly murky — like the swamp grounds it was built on — but according to Campo, the aforementioned Al Toefield and two other stalwarts of the New York City cycling scene — Lou Maltese and Pete Senia — got the track and the Kissena Club going in the early 1960s. Their efforts paid off big for American speed cycling when Robert Moses, who headed the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair along with many other things in the city, improved the Velodrome for use as a World’s Fair site. The track hosted the U.S. Olympic trials for speed cycling in ’64, and Kissena racers took five of eight places on the U.S. Olympics squad that competed in Tokyo, Japan. Six years later Kissena hosted the U.S. track nationals. But after these glory days, in years dominated by terms like “fiscal crisis,” city agencies stinted on maintenance of the track, and according to an interview with Pete Senia published in 1995, the trio who started the Velodrome were forced, over the years, to clean the track themselves and raise thousands more dollars from bike clubs and Siegfried Stern’s family to sustain the municipally-owned property. Still, the track produced what one writer called “luminaries,” including Olympians, national champions, and a host of other racing stars.

Bike racing has a long history in New York City and in the U.S. The Century Road Club ran races from Central Park to Montauk, Long Island in the 1890s, and in 1898 the National Cycling Association formed to govern professional racing; first in parks and on the roads, and as the sport’s popularity grew, more often in specially-built velodromes with wooden tracks and steeply-banked curves. Also in the 1890s, Madison Square Garden (then located on 26th St. and Madison Ave.) began holding six-day international races in its indoor velodrome, filling the arena nightly with wildly enthusiastic fans. Warner Brothers’ 1934 movie called Six Day Bike Riders captured this non-stop extravaganza, raced in eleven two-man teams and known as “the race that goes nowhere.” Bike racing in the 1930s attracted some of the biggest crowds in sport and supported the highest-paid athletes, but after World War II, velodromes around the country started to disappear. Instituted in 2000, the new “Madison” race in the Olympics recalls these legendary feats.

Hopes for Kissena’s Velodrome

Maybe our new century holds promise for speed cyclers since velodromes around the country are enjoying record participation and crowds. New York’s Department of Parks and Recreation spent about half a million in city tax dollars to rebuild Kissena Velodrome and start an after-school program for children with Olympic aspirations. Private donors contributed about $100,000 more. To celebrate the track’s re-opening in 2004 national competitions were held. Decades had passed since Kissena last saw a national-level meet. All this official attention after years of neglect may seem a little surprising. One inspiration, according to Campo, was the 2002 article in Bicycling Magazine written by a Velodrome fan that extolled the human virtues of the scene but said that, physically-speaking, it was the country’s worst track. Another spur was New York City’s (now failed) bid for the 2012 Olympic Games, and Campo credits the NYC2012 committee with improving the environment for amateur sports throughout the city.

An important reason for the Velodrome’s recovery has to be John Campo himself, and all the other people who, by donating time and money, and by loving and using the place, continue to keep it alive. The passion behind Campo’s efforts usually comes out when he’s talking about the kids, and his hopes that he and the track will be there for all the city’s kids who are lost, need direction, and need a place where they can grow and develop with integrity. This notion of winning is not simple for Campo. He believes in winning. And when someone wins a race, of course someone else loses. But he also thinks bike racing shows that in a night of multiple races there can be multiple winners. We can all get ahead his message seems to be if we don’t believe that our own advancement rests solely on keeping everyone else down.

Valentine from “Big Bumpy.”

In 2004, Kissena’s fabled Velodrome finally seemed to be on the right track. As its grass roots promoters wrote in their celebratory re-opening program: “We at the Velodrome / The long suffering hopeful / Us at the big bumpy / Would like to thank all our supporters.”

For updated information about hours and registering to race, log onto www.kissena.info.

Public transit: F to Parsons Ave. Transfer to the Q34 or Q25 bus to Booth Memorial Ave. Or take the #7 to Main St./Flushing and ride your bike about 1 mile south on Kissena Blvd.