Quote Originally Posted by kklemmer View Post
My memories of the Dorais Velodrome was going there in the Summer of 1990 when I lived at Van Dyke and McNichols. I took my road bike there and rode the track after hearing about its glory days from a housemate who raced there in the 70's. The surface was pretty rough at that time with lots of wheel sucking cracks. It was a blast however!
Later that summer I heard about and attended the races featured in the videos above. Only went to watch, didn't race, but found it fascinating.
Fast forward to winter 2003 or 2004; i just purchased a fixed gear track bike and wanted to try it out. The Bloomer Park track was not yet in operation for the season [[may not even have been finished at that time). This was January or February but dry and sunny. So i put the bike in the car and drove over to Dorais. The track surface was incredibly deteriorated, tagged and waist high weeds growing through the cracks. An engine block was in the middle of the backstraight. But I managed to do a couple laps without crashing or getting a flat on the piles of broken glass. Later that summer I had an opportunity to ride on the new track; what a wonderful experience by comparison and it made the banked turns at Dorais [[seemed so scary steep in 1990) look tame by comparison. Because Dorais was concrete, the banking could only be poured at a limited angle without slumping to the bottom.