Peter Williams: Northern velodrome vital to continue success

If there's a candidate for New Zealand's sport of the year, the case could hardly be much stronger for cycling.

Alison Shanks won the women's pursuit at the world track cycling championships in Poland in March where the men's teams pursuit picked up a bronze.

Sam Webster won three gold medals at the world junior championships, combining with Ethan Mitchell and Cameron Karwowski to win the team sprint. Then there's Sarah Walker's two world BMX titles and Brook Macdonald's junior men's downhill at the Mountainbike Worlds.

On the European roads, Hayden Roulston's third in a stage of the Tour de France vies with Greg Henderson's stage three win on the Vuelta a Espana as the year's outstanding achievement. Both are among the all-time best results for our road cyclists.

In the background to all this success, an intriguing contest is developing - where should the country's next covered velodrome be built?

New Zealand's track cycling success, much decorated by world championship and Olympic medals, is remarkable considering the relatively low quality of the facilities. Sarah Ulmer never had an indoor wooden track for training at home because the only covered track, in Invercargill, didn't open till 2006.

The southern city got the jump on other places because it had the money. Every time you have a beer in Invercargill you contribute to the profits of the Invercargill Licensing Trust, and the ILT ploughs $10 million a year back into the community. The velodrome received a $1m grant from central government but most of the $8m price came from the ILT.

The facility was significant in the success of Roulston and the team pursuiters in Beijing last year, and in the medals Shanks and the juniors have won. Every New Zealand track record, except for two rarely contested events, has been set there. The junior world champs, in Moscow last month, will be in Invercargill in 2012.

But as well as training for elite athletes, an indoor velodrome provides plenty of opportunities for continued recruitment and development. As Shanks and Webster have shown, you can go from a beginner to a world champion in only three or four years.

For that reason it's important a velodrome, in the North Island, is built to ensure the momentum is maintained. Three proposals are being considered, from Wanganui, Hawke's Bay and Auckland. Cycling's governing body, Bike NZ, and government sports agency Sparc are reviewing all facilities and are expected to recommend one, or more, of the projects in November.

But where, or if, another indoor velodrome is built will come down to money. There's no generous licensing trust to write the cheque anywhere in the North Island, although the Hawke's Bay proposal has a head start with a $1m naming rights sponsorship already committed by the local power lines company.

Then there's the possibility of Auckland bidding for the 2018 Commonwealth Games. If that's to happen, and a decision is due in January, then the city will need a world-class indoor velodrome - although it's been suggested that, even if Auckland were to bid, it might make economic sense to base all cycling events in Hawke's Bay.

What's most important is that the brilliant progress cycling has made in the past decade is continued, and that an important issue like where to build a new velodrome does not descend into a political or territorial scrap.