nelson vails/ germaine burton

The Tonbridge 6 Day Race.

I walked into my local sports center and discovered there was a velodrome in there. A little wooden one of the 6-day race type and American sprinter Nelson Vails was doing a match sprint. All the kit and the riders was 80’s vintage, as was the sports center, which was ‘local’ to a place I moved away from 20 years ago. I was quite annoyed, thinking ‘so there was a 6 day race there and no one told me?’

A very very young Germaine Burton rode past, aged about 5 but on an adult’s pursuit bike. He was having a lot of difficulty riding, as you can imagine, and as he passed me he over balanced. I stopped him falling, then held open the door that he was trying to get through. As he rode off, I wondered if I should have let a 5 yr old outside riding on his own without checking with his parent.

Later, there was some sort of big meeting in this velodrome, held by the banking but everybody else involved were much more interested in checking out the track that what ever it was that we were sposed to be talking about.