Carson Velodrome’s History an Up-and-Down Ride : Cycling: The Cal State Dominguez Hills facility loses money, but enthusiasts and a new manager hope to turn things around.

The first thing--perhaps the most important thing--to remember about the velodrome bicycle is that it has no brakes.

This initially worried Guy Barker, a 37-year-old sales manager more accustomed to biking the gentle byways of Huntington Beach. But the novice velodrome rider understood the reason: Sudden braking could cause collisions when bikers are whirling around the track at more than 30 m.p.h. in a pack.

Besides, he said, the Olympic Velodrome at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson, the cycling venue for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, was just too intriguing to pass up.

“It’s so ominous,” he said after a recent class in which he was learning how to ride on the 333-meter concrete oval with 33-degree banked turns. “You feel like you’re riding inside a roller coaster.”

Since the Olympics, the velodrome itself has been on an up and down ride--mostly down.

It has weathered financial headaches as the people trying to run it cope with an unfortunate fact--track cycling hasn’t stirred the masses the way it was supposed to after the games. During the games, when Olympic fever was at a high, cycling events were sold out and there was much talk about the velodrome becoming the centerpiece of world class cycling in the United States.

These days, organizers are lucky if they get more than 200 people to a race. Those who do show very often are friends and relatives of the racers.

Faced with this, the track is pushing to improve the bottom line. A year ago it hired a new general manager--Nick Curl, a former executive director of the L.A. Marathon and promoter of a successful road show for game show host Bob Barker.

Curl’s main answer has been to book more lucrative, non-cycling events that have ranged from advertising shoots to radio-controlled car races.

“I really want to see this place turn around,” Curl said. “I’ve enjoyed the challenge.”

Here’s what he’s up against.

The velodrome, which has an operating budget of $200,000, last year ran about $10,000 in the red, not an unusual occurrence. In the years since the Olympics, it usually has lost money, only making a small profit or breaking even a couple of years.

The Olympic Velodrome, one of four in California and 19 nationwide, can commiserate with other velodromes across the country: They rarely make money, track managers said.

Officials at the other two velodromes in Southern California--in Encino and San Diego--said they usually break even or make slight profits. But it’s not easy, and both benefit from substantially lower overhead costs than the $3-million Olympic Velodrome.

Track maintenance and insurance costs take their toll, track managers said.

“It’s not looking real good,” said Bill Murphy, president of the nonprofit organization that runs the Encino Velodrome. “We’re just keeping our nose above water.”

A fundamental problem, track cycling enthusiasts and managers agreed, is that few people know about, much less follow, track racing, which gets little exposure on television and in other media.

Echoing the sentiments of other track cycling enthusiasts, Danny Amat, a Malaysian cycling champion who trains at the Olympic Velodrome and instructs beginners, said: “Yeah, everyone in California has a bike. Everybody knows Greg LeMond and the Tour de France. But track cycling just isn’t great here.”

The nonprofit California State University-Dominguez Hills Foundation, which runs the velodrome for the university, has absorbed the Olympic Velodrome losses, but its executive director said she and the directors have grown ever more impatient with the deficits.

“The velodrome is an important part of the campus but, darn it, it’s tough to make money,” foundation executive director Jackie Countryman said.

But for now, despite occasional rumors to the contrary, the foundation is giving the velodrome a chance.

“Right now the board is committed to trying to make it work,” said Jim Armstrong, chairman of the foundation’s board of directors.

In short, Curl is under the gun to make the velodrome turn a profit soon.

“The pressure is on that guy,” Countryman said. “Nick is our savior and I tell him that every day.”

The savior is relentlessly sunny despite his daunting challenge.

“We are turning it around,” Curl said.

Turning it around, that is, with fewer cycling events.

Although the velodrome continues to have adult cycling classes two nights per week, open training three times a week, and a free youth cycling class four days a week, cycling just doesn’t pay the bills, Curl said.

Most of the 5,000-seat velodrome’s revenue comes from renting it out for industrial videos, television and magazine advertising shoots (Doritos and Isuzu have used it as a backdrop) and for special events such as concerts and other entertainment.

The alternative uses don’t faze enthusiasts, just as long as the velodrome stays open.

“It doesn’t concern me that it’s used for other things,” said Amat, who enrolled at Dominguez Hills chiefly for its proximity to the velodrome. “What does concern me is the rumors that it was going to close. This is my life. I came here for this velodrome.”

He figures the velodrome probably would do better if more people knew about it. Even on campus, he said, he occasionally encounters people who haven’t a clue what the velodrome is, or who have forgotten that it was a venue for the 1984 Olympics.

“They say, ‘Oh, yeah, the velodrome. Is it still up?”’ Amat said.

To increase its exposure, the velodrome has offered discount rates for community activities, including an Easter sunrise service and a voter registration rally.

Curl said he has no problem swallowing the irony of a cycling track that hardly benefits financially from cycling--just as long as the dollars come in.

This past year, Curl said, 22 events were held at the velodrome, with the prospects good that six to eight of those will return next year.

That’s an improvement from what he said he started with: “I came in here and there was no schedule,” he said.

This weekend there’s the RC ThunderDrome, a three-day series of radio-controlled car racing.

“We look like full-size racing going on down here,” gushed promoter Dan Moynihan.

So what about bicycle races?

Curl said the velodrome simply can’t afford to sponsor its own races, and outside promoters are not legion.

Attracting corporate sponsors for an event that doesn’t draw a large audience isn’t easy, especially in a recession.

Last summer the velodrome announced it would no longer bankroll the California Gran Prix, a 5-year-old annual race, because it wasn’t making any money. It also laid off its track director, meaning nobody at the track is exclusively devoted to organizing races.

So it has come down to a loose organization of velodrome devotees, “Back on Track,” to put on their own races.

The group held a few races in September and early October, sponsored by small, cycling-oriented companies in what Tom Fritts, a “Back on Track” leader, called a “rescue attempt.”

“If the velodrome closed, it would have been detrimental to the sport overall,” said Fritts, whose 16-year-old son, Kenny, is a junior cycling racer. “There would have been a whole lot of people who would never have been exposed to this sport.”

The group is looking for sponsors so it can put on races every Saturday night next season, roughly from April to October.

Racing enthusiasts swear the sport would catch on if only more people attended meets. Without brakes, cyclists control their speed by pedaling faster or slower as they careen around the track. In some races, riders in a pack bump into each--often intentionally--as they circle the track several times at breakneck speed. Crashes occur occasionally, but serious injuries are not as common as one might think.

“When they fall usually they just slide down the embankment and off the track,” Amat said.

“Races are always so close,” said Brad House, a “Back on Track” organizer. “You got no brakes. It’s a little physical. But it’s thrilling. You can actually feel the G-force as you go around the banked turns.”

Velodrome novices say they, too, get a lot out of the track--even without brakes. Said Barker: “It’s not as scary as it looks.”