It's different from the event you see in the Olympics - firstly, it's held outdoors. It's like horse-racing in England, the remit of old men smoking and gambling, which were both surprised about (we discovered this when we went to the Chiba track a few weeks back). The riders here wear shoulder-padding as they actually get quite physical when they race around the track, and nudge and push and even headbutt each other!
In one of the races there was a crash where two of the riders came off and were stretchered off the track and a third rider had his front wheel completely buckled by the incident. It happened on the final straight so it didn't effect the race but made for a spectacular finish.
There were other some other attractions during the day, see the pictures and videos below...
These were the posters dotted round all the stations, pretty darn cool!
The Kierin girls wearing strange little outfits that seemed to involve tiny tutus, massive socks and clumpy shoes. Hot!
The pacemaker - I liked his purple outfit
The cyclists gearing up for the race (well, ironically they ride fixed so no gears). Check out the padding.
In every race, they had one rider in purple, one in pink, one in blue, green, black, white, red and yellow. That was cool too.
Mid-race, our view from the indoor seating
Before some of the races the riders came out and said a quick hello and thank you (that all I could understand), and shook hands with a few fans
There was an area with some crazy bikes, much to Jack's delight. Everyone should try a panda once in their life...
Jack tackling a modern penny-farthing
This bike was silly and gave me the giggles when Jack rode it
Jack tried to bunny-hop on this one, sadly to no avail!
*This was the best bit of the day, this bike was set up for you to challenge a pro-rider's speed. Anything over 65 kmph meant a prize...
The pro came out to show his stuff, managing a cool 83kmph. When he stripped down to his shorts it was incredible, we'd never seen anything like it, thigh muscles like you wouldn't believe!
Jack signed up to have a go and watched the other men's attempts...66kmph, 68kmph, 73kmph
Jack stepped up to the challenge, and the crowd were very interested to see how the only Westener would fare...He managed a schweet 78.5kmph, blowing the other contenders out of the water. One old man groped Jack's thigh afterwards, impressed with his performance. Jack won a bottle of water and a voucher for a 7/11 store - he reassures me that he'll use it to buy porn :)
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