A battered velodrome, a borrowed bike: Nigeria's Olympic track cyclist battles the odds in Paris

Nigerian Ese Ukpeseraye might have been dead last in the Paris Olympic Games track cycling qualifying event for women's Individual Sprint on Friday, but considering she hadn't trained on a velodrome for more than a year and was riding on a borrowed bike, her 200-metre flying lap was a more than respectable time - 11.652  seconds. It was a performance she hoped would inspire her country to invest in track cycling.

Ukpeseraye said she was so surprised by the time that she felt as happy as if she had won the race.

"I was very happy because in the flying lap, I've never done an 11 [second lap] before. I always do 12, sometimes 13," Ukpeseraye told Cyclingnews. "I was even surprised that without preparing for it, I did 11. There are some people who have been preparing for this for the past three years, and they did 11 like me as well. So I was very, very happy, as if I'm the one that won.

"If I prepared for it, I would do much better. Because I never trained for it, and I did such a time."

Ukpeseraye was a surprise entry into the women's sprint events. She was in Paris for the women's road race but was added to the track roster after Egypt lost their place when the UCI disqualified entrant, Shahd Saied, who had been named to the Olympic team despite being suspended for crashing her competitor during their national championships.

The notice of Nigeria's entry came less than a week before the start of the Paris Olympics, and the Nigerian team hadn't packed any track bikes. In stepped the German team, who had previously helped out Ukpeseraye's team in the 2022 UCI Track World Championships when they didn't have aero bars for the Team Pursuit.

This time, Ukpeseraye got to ride on a specially-engineered bike designed by the Institut für Forschung und Entwicklung von Sportgeräten (FES), leant to her for the Keirin earlier this week and for Friday's Sprint heat.

"The bike was fantastic," she said. "There are times when they give you a new bike to race, and you will find it difficult because you have not been training with it and are not used to it. But for me, when they gave me the bike, the first day I used the bike, it was like I had been using it. I was very comfortable on it.

"I really appreciate them a lot, because they noticed that I am in need and they were able to assist me."

Ukpeseraye isn't new to track cycling, having raced an unusual variety of events including the Team Pursuit, Team Sprint, 500-metre time trial, Keirin and Omnium in international competition, but has only raced Individual Sprint at the Continental Championships, and not regularly.

Her results don't reflect her obvious talent, however, because while Nigeria has a wooden velodrome in one of the most expensive sports stadiums in the world, the facility has a history of neglect. Although it was refurbished in recent years, the velodrome has been designated as a multi-purpose facility and is rented out for religious services and other events for the equivalent of €375 a day.

Ukpeseraye hoped that her appearance and promising performance at the Olympics would lead to the velodrome being set aside for its intended purpose.

"We have a very beautiful track. Our track is the best in Africa, but we don't use it. They don't give us the permission," Ukpeseraye said. 

"Sometimes we have competition and we want to train in the velodrome but there is a party there and they say we cannot use it, so we take our bikes and we go home. When we wanted to go to Glasgow for the World Championship, we have to be training on the track. But unfortunately, we cannot use the track, because they are using it for parties."

She said that sometimes for the parties the users will nail banners to the wooden track surface - an absolute sacrilege in track cycling.

"It's just like they don't understand what track is all about. Sometimes they put some nails in the track when they are doing a party and then when we are riding, we have accidents because there are nails. You have a puncture and you crash because they nailed the track.

"We will have a lot to learn about that because I think if people came here today to watch, they will know that this track is not meant for parties. It's not meant for other occasions."

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