Encouraging as it has been to see the various buildings and pitches pop up around the Sport Ireland Campus in Dublin this past 20 years, there is an unavoidable shortfall when it comes to modern, world-class sports facilities elsewhere on the island. The closure of the athletics track at the UCC Mardyke Sports Ground earlier this year, which left the entire county of Cork, its 8,600 athletes and 58 clubs bereft of a single track for a time, was the most egregious example of just how sparsely served the island can be. Why shouldn’t we have the best of both worlds? It turns out that we can. Cycling had waited years for a single velodrome before confirmation at the start of this month that the tender process for the new National Velodrome and Badminton Centre had received the green light from government. That was The Pale sorted. Now it has been confirmed that the Technological University of the Shannon (TUS) and Cycling Ireland (CI) have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a separate €15.4m indoor velodrome on the northside of Limerick City. Both projects are due to be completed by 2027.
Limerick Velodrome: A Boost to Irish Cycling
The Limerick velodrome will be central to the proposed new multi-purpose sports arena on the Technological University’s Coonagh Campus. TUS and Cycling Ireland have agreed to pursue the project as a joint application through the Large-Scale Sports Infrastructure Fund. The indoor arena will be built with a twin-skin pressurised system similar to the Air Dome built near Claremorris in Mayo by Connacht GAA, and to the Raymond Poulidor Velodrome in France which was opened in July of 2019. The facility will include a 200m cycling track, changing facilities and 476 permanent spectator seats. It will cover 8,000 square metres and be suitable for gymnastics, badminton, volleyball, tennis and for other events and exams.
The Impact of the Velodrome
“It’s incredible,” said Cycling Ireland CEO James Quilligan of the news. “It will be open to the general public and to schools, for people of all ages, from children under the age of five and all the way up to over 70s. “We have cycling programmes for schools with 30,000 kids involved and we have had to cancel some of them because of the weather. So a project like this obviously gets around that. Having a regional velodrome is absolutely key.” All this means Ireland is finally catching up with the competition. Of the ten nations that qualified for the final of the women’s team pursuit at this summer’s Olympics, Ireland was the only one without an indoor track of its own.
The World Championships this October will be held in Denmark, a country routinely used as an example of how a country this size should do sports facilities, and the prospect of two velodromes down the line will have huge spinoff benefits for our international athletes. Lara Gillespie finished tenth in the women’s Omnium at the Paris Olympics having pushed hard for a possible bronze and Irish cyclists have consistently achieved eye-catching results in major events despite the absence of any suitable facilities on home soil. “Our high-performance athletes have been training in Spain for years now,” said Quilligan. “We have to rent a track in Majorca for them and that is basically all-year around. We have three or four major camps there every year. “That’s been the case for the last two Olympic cycles basically. There were one or two doing it before that but the more people with talent we get on bikes the bigger the squads have become and we saw how that paid off in the Olympics this year.” The bottom line is that Ireland should have two state-of-the-art indoor velodromes operational by the time our top track cyclists compete at the next Olympic and Paralympic Games, in Los Angeles in 2028. Best-case scenario would be at least one more. “We cover all 32 counties and we would ideally like to have one in Ulster as well,” Quilligan admitted. “You see with swimming that they have three centres around the country. Ideally you would like one in every province but one more would probably suffice.” Maybe some day. For now, two will more than do.
A New Era for Irish Cycling
This new velodrome in Limerick, along with the national velodrome already in the works, signals a new era for Irish cycling. It is a clear commitment to investing in the sport at all levels, from grassroots participation to elite performance. It represents a significant step forward for the sport in Ireland.
In addition to providing much-needed training facilities for Irish athletes, the new velodrome will also be a valuable resource for the local community. It will be open to the public and will offer a variety of programs for people of all ages. This will help to promote cycling as a healthy and enjoyable activity for everyone.
The new velodrome is a testament to the growing popularity of cycling in Ireland. It is also a reflection of the government's commitment to supporting the development of sport. The facility is expected to be a major boost for Irish cycling and will help to ensure that the sport continues to thrive in the years to come.
