Matthew Richardson leaves the track in London's velodrome with a contorted face. The lactate is literally oozing out of the Australian's thighs. He has just won the keirin, the Japanese combat sprint. Now he is kneeling on the carpeted floor in front of the ramp that leads down into the indoor area and burying his head in a black bin bag.
Richardson has to vomit. His girlfriend Pauline Grabosch, who will be in action herself a few minutes later, hands him water. But even three minutes later, when he is able to walk again, the 23-year-old is still visibly out of breath - he has just exhausted himself so much.
Forty minutes later, however, he is back at the start in the sprint tournament as if nothing had happened. Richardson has three more heats to go in the next hour, and at the end of the evening the runner-up is narrowly defeated by world champion Harrie Lavreysen in the sprint final, but thanks to his keirin triumph he still snatches the overall lead in the Track Champions League from the Dutchman. The next day, he is the overall winner of the new race series, which the entire track cycling scene is hoping will give it a boost.
Track Champions League: Exciting staging
The duel between the shooting star from Down Under and the two years older defending champion from Luyksgestel on the Dutch-Belgian border electrified the fans weekend after weekend. It is exactly what the organiser Discovery Sports Events and the UCI wanted: High-performance sport with a world-class line-up in an interesting, compact format for the fans, which challenges the athletes enormously due to the extreme intensity - and all of this in an exciting production with light shows and sound effects.
"The greatest satisfaction for me is the high intensity of the competitions - this year even more than last year," says Francois Ribeiro, Head of Discovery Sports Events (DSE). Like the broadcaster Eurosport, DSE is a subsidiary of Warner Bros Discovery and organiser and promoter of the Track Champions League. In autumn 2018, the 50-year-old Frenchman Ribeiro presented the idea for the new racing series in talks with UCI President David Lappartient.
Track Champions League: 23 days to collect points
The format was developed together. The Track Champions League (TCL) comprises two leagues each for women and men: the Sprint League with sprint and keirin tournaments and the Endurance League with scratch and elimination races. In each of the four leagues, 18 riders will be at the start and will collect points for the four overall rankings over 23 days in Mallorca, in Berlin, in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines just outside Paris and on two consecutive days in London.
The overall winners receive 25,000 euros, and each individual race win is also worth 1,000 euros. The six best riders in the respective disciplines qualify at the World Championships a few weeks before the start of the TCL season. 12 of the 18 places are awarded in this way, with DSE filling up the rest through invitations.
From Instagram to Eurosport
And these invitations are coveted. Not only the prize money and entry fees, but also the extensive marketing organised by Discovery make the series very attractive for the athletes in its second season, explains German sprinter Stefan Bötticher: "Last year showed how phenomenal the show is that we can offer and how attractive track cycling can be," says the 30-year-old. "That's why it's even more important to us and the series is even more important." The appreciation that track cyclists receive from the media is unique in track cycling.
Organiser DSE is very good at flooding the cycling world's Instagram channels with TCL content and also building stories around individual characters on television. In Germany, an average of just under 40,000 people watched on Eurosport. Topics include the love between shooting star Richardson and Pauline Grabosch as well as the friendly rivalry between Harrie Lavreysen and Jeffrey Hoogland or between Emma Hinze and Lea Friedrich last year.
Track Champions League: Good mood
Swiss rider Claudio Imhof, who is celebrating overall victory in the Endurance League in London, confirms that the track aces usually only receive so much attention at the Olympics. "I got a lot of feedback from Swiss fans, but also a lot more media enquiries than usual," he says and is sad that the series is already over after 23 days: "I hope there will be more rounds next year." A new addition to the 2022 calendar was Berlin, where the "Ufo", as the Berliners call their underground velodrome on Landsberger Allee, became the TCL venue on 19 November.
The hall, which is also used for large concerts, is ideally suited to the format and the atmosphere created by DSE. When the main lights go out shortly before 7 p.m. and the light show begins, there is a goosebump atmosphere, especially when the athletes enter the track in the spotlight of an otherwise dark hall.
However, the darkness cannot hide the fact that only the grandstands on the straights are well filled, while the seats in the bends are almost empty. Nevertheless, the athletes are happy: "The atmosphere was really good," says Bötticher. Compared to classic six-day races, it is noticeable that the audience is less alcoholised and that many children are in the velodrome despite the late evening - the races run from 7pm to 10pm.
Special feeling
Cheered on by Tour de France track announcer Marc Chavet and German hall announcer Sebastian Paddags, the spectators celebrate the local athletes in particular. At each of the five events, the local heroes roll through the hall waving and presenting themselves to the fans before the first starting shot. When it's their turn to race, the spectators already know who they have to shout for - and they do. "It was a special feeling every time I was pushed to the start and my name was called," confirms Stefan Bötticher.
The audience is all the more disillusioned half an hour later when the great hope Lea Sophie Friedrich drops out of the keirin without any chance of finishing last. Friedrich leaves the track in tears and appears in front of the microphone half an hour later: "I'm ill and have spent the whole week in my bed, sleeping a lot. I can hardly describe the feeling now, I'm just very sad. This was so important to me, but I can't go on," said the seven-time world champion.
Friedrich's disappointment emphasises the importance of the TCL from an athlete's perspective. The national associations, however, rate the sporting value less highly. Although BDR Vice President Günther Schabel and General Secretary Martin Wolf are on the sidelines in Berlin and are enthusiastic about the event; Wolf also confirms that he is in favour of the TCL being held in the capital again in 2023.
However, the results are less important for the association: although the overall TCL ranking counts towards the world rankings and therefore the upcoming World Cup qualifiers, it does not count towards the Olympic qualifiers, which are currently above all else - these are focussed on the World Cup, European Championships and the Nations Cup held in the spring. Anything else would be unfair due to the TCL's invitation system.
Defending champion needs a break
Defending champion Emma Hinze, for example, decided not to compete in the Champions League this season due to the Olympic qualifiers. The 25-year-old was exhausted after the European Championships at home in Munich in August and the World Championships in Paris in October and urgently needed a break so that she could prepare again for the European Championships in Grenchen, Switzerland, in February.
The qualification cycle for the 2024 Olympic Games begins there. "It was a really difficult decision for me to make, as I really learned to appreciate the format last year," she explained at the end of October, but added: "Continuing to complete the competition programme, which is geared towards maximum performance, could affect my performance in the long term. My body is telling me that I should recharge my batteries."
National sprint coach Jan van Eijden welcomes this decision. "It was the right thing to do for Emma's long-term development," he says, explaining what training content would normally be on the programme in November with a view to the February European Championships: "You would be in the strength phase, with some supporting track training. We then built that into the Champions League weeks and the athletes still did strength training twice a week."
Track Champions League: Fuelling motivation
However, van Eijden admits that the ideal training plan would not have required the stress of four consecutive race weekends. "Ideally, I would have said: don't race there. But at the end of the day, it's about the athletes. If they want to do it, I won't put any obstacles in their way. You mustn't forget that they can earn money this way, which is otherwise rare in track cycling," said the 46-year-old. "So we've included it in our annual planning, and it works. If the European Championships were just three weeks later, it would be a different story. But there was still room."
Pauline Grabosch, who had to decline her invitation in 2021 due to a military training course but was the centre of attention in 2022, also struggled. She complained of a sore throat in Berlin and only got into her stride on the last evening of the race in London. "I wish I had done better," she summarised, somewhat disappointed. "The season was long and you still have to make sure you prepare for 2023 and take positive aspects from here - especially in terms of motivation. There is that here and that's why I still enjoyed it. It's always great to race against the best in the world. You don't get this opportunity that often," says the 24-year-old, who competed in her first keirin race in several years at the TCL start in Mallorca, for example.
The opportunity to compete with the best more often and to try things out without the pressure of not having to qualify for the Olympics immediately is something that national coach van Eijden also sees as very positive and summarises: "Nothing better than the Track Champions League can happen to us. Especially in Germany, where we don't get as much attention."
Stars from the street are missing
It is a pity that the Track Champions League has so far lacked endurance specialists in track cycling, some of whom also ride for World Tour racing teams on the road. Names like Filippo Ganna, Lotte Kopecky, Roger Kluge, Mieke Kröger, Ethan Hayter and Benjamin Thomas would do the start list good. For them, however, the dates clash with the interests of their teams - basic training is on the agenda in November and the road riders are just coming back from their holidays when the TCL season begins.
Lea Lin Teutenberg rode along anyway, completed her normal training programme during the week and was largely without a chance in the competitions on Saturday - partly due to a serious crash in Berlin, which once again underlined the risk for the professional road teams.
While the sprint disciplines fit perfectly into the format, some of the endurance races have been trimmed: a scratch in the TCL is only five kilometres long instead of ten. But that doesn't make the evening any easier, emphasises European runner-up Moritz Malcharek: "The scratch is very intense as a result, and then there's not even an hour's break until the elimination race. I had my pulse beating again towards the end," he explains in Berlin. "You also have to remember that in the afternoon we're also competing in a points race over 100 laps, which doesn't count towards the overall TCL classification."
Between rubbish bags and victories
However, the TCL format is particularly brutal for the sprinters. The best athletes compete in up to five races in three hours - on four consecutive weekends, with the double event in London at the end. "You hope to preserve your form after the World Championships and carry it over the four weeks - and that you don't run out of steam at the end in London," says Bötticher, who managed this well in 2021 and 2022.
After finishing second overall last year, this time he came third in the Sprint League. "The format seems to suit me and I recover well from high intensities. The important thing is to ride consistently and not allow yourself any mistakes. That can set you back a long way," he explains. The TCL therefore requires endurance for sprinters - and sprinting qualities for endurance specialists, coupled with the ability to recover quickly. Richardson's performances between rubbish bag and sprint victories prove this very vividly.
Previous overall winners of the Track Champions League
- Sprint League Women
2021 Emma Hinze
2022 Mathilde Gros
- Sprint League Men
2021 Harrie Lavreysen
2022 Matthew Richardson
- Endurance League Women
2021 Katie Archibald
2022 Jennifer Valente
- Endurance League Men
2021 Gavin Hoover
2022 Claudio Imho
Track Champions League in the digital space
Discovery Sports Events knows that a new, younger audience is no longer attracted by pure TV coverage. The focus is on social media, but also on new digital formats: In London, DSE boss Francois Ribeiro presented an initial four-year partnership with the Californian company Infinite Reality. Together, they are working on a virtual parallel world, a metaverse. By the 2023 season, fans will be able to experience the Track Champions League even more intensively on their smartphone, tablet or computer.
Users move around the Metaverse in a similar way to the classic PC game "The Sims". They meet up with other fans online in private rooms or the public lounge, can chat via video calls, follow the track cycling action together and freely choose from all possible camera perspectives and performance data. Athletes will also visit the Metaverse between competitions and socialise with fans.
Users do not have to pay for Metaverse. "We want to make the sport bigger and bring it to a new audience. It would make absolutely no sense to require a membership," explains Ribeiro. "It's not about making money directly with the Metaverse. It's more of a huge marketing tool." Nevertheless, it will also be possible to spend money in the virtual world: in fan shops with real and virtual products.
