Splinters concern velodrome cyclists
Curt Harnett warned this would be a possibility. Earlier this year, the chef de mission for Canada’s team at the Pan American Games described the danger of cycling at speed on a giant wooden track. The danger? Splinters. Harnett, a three- time Olympic medal winner in cycling, fell while training on an outdoor track. When he got up, he saw splinters had torn through his shorts, leaving him, “a step away from my boys being cocktail olives.”
The spectre of splinters returned over the weekend, this time to an indoor track at the Pan Am Games. The velodrome, in Milton, Ont., was built specifically for these Games — at a cost of about $ 63- million — with a team of German specialists brought in to hammer in the 60 kilometres of Siberian spruce by hand. And still, the splinters. On Saturday, Cuban cyclist Lisandra Guerra touched wheels with a competitor and went down hard on the track, sliding for some distance before coming to a stop. The television camera captured the damage, with a massive splinter lodged in her right arm, near the shoulder.
Guerra had already earned two medals on the track, with a silver in the women’s team sprint, and another silver in the women’s Keirin.
Saad Rafi, chief executive of the Toronto host committee, said no complaints about the track have reached his office. He said the track has been in “constant use” since it opened its doors in early January.
“One never knows what caused that splinter,” he said on Monday. “It could have been a gouge from a pedal, or a gear.”