Hopes new Ipswich BMX track will create future Olympians

A BMX club, considered to be the oldest of its kind in the UK, said it hoped its new track would become home to Olympians of the future.

Ipswich BMX Club has launched its new £350,000 facility at Landseer Road later with an afternoon of racing.

The club was founded in 1980 and its new track replaces the original one that could no longer be maintained.

Club secretary Tracey Reeve said the track was the difference between the club "continuing or disbanding".

She said the difference between the new and old tracks was like "chalk and cheese".

The old track had "low rhythm sections and dust berms", no drainage and had "got to the stage it couldn't be maintained", she said.

While the new one features a 5m (16ft) start hill, required for major events, an electric pro-start gate, asphalt berms and has been built by Clark and Kent Contractors, the firm behind the London 2012 Olympic BMX track.

There is also a new clubhouse for its 120 members.

Miss Reeve said: "It's the difference between us continuing as a club, growing and creating potential Olympics riders or not having a club at all and disbanding because we wouldn't have been able to continue with the old track."

She said the club had seen a surge in interest because of the new track, and since British BMX stars Bethany Shriever, Kyle Whyte, Charlotte Worthington and Declan Brooks brought home medals from the Tokyo Olympic Games.

The fundraising, which the club had to do itself, however, happened long before Britain's medal haul in the Games, she said.

Miss Reeve said the project had taken two years to come to fruition.

"I'm very proud of what the committee and the club have achieved, we've all worked hard," she said.

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