Velodrome

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Sites of memory · Year: 1899

During the final decade of the 19th century cycling, like many other sports and pastimes introduced to the Canary Islands by the large English colony settled there, caught on among the wealthy society of Santa Cruz at that time. 

Soon the first bicycles Rudge, Wedge & Co. Limited or Humer began to be imported, the latter brand represented and sold in Tenerife by Manuel León, manager of the "Veloz Sport" club. These were expensive and exclusive items that became commonplace for an urban bourgeoisie who rode them as a symbol of prestige, despite the fact that the terrain of Santa Cruz, mostly steep and uphill, was not the most suitable for the new pastime.

In 1896 there are reports of the first cycling competitions in Santa Cruz, with races and skill demonstrations. In May of the following year an international cycling contest was held over five kilometres on the road from Santa Cruz to San Andrés, with the winner taking 15 minutes to complete the race.

It was the Sport Club de Tenerife, presided over by Arturo Ballester, that began looking in the summer of 1897 for a suitable place to build a proper velodrome that could host regulated competitions. They found the land on the edge of the paseo de los Coches, on a plot below street level that today forms part of the current Parque García Sanabria.

The "Velodrom", as it was called, was inaugurated on 5 February 1899 with several cycling competitions, fencing demonstrations and a pigeon shooting contest. According to the next day's press reports it was quite a spectacle with a large audience. 

The venue, with its 250-metre lap track, operated for just over a decade, as before the outbreak of the First World War the plot where it stood was purchased by the Sociedad de Edificaciones and converted into a construction materials depot. This did not prevent the enthusiasm for bicycles and the world of cycling in the city from increasing exponentially over time.

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