Steher Races: A Dying Sport?
The Berlin Six Day is one of the few places you can still see them
Editor’s Note: The Substack outage on Friday derailed my regularly scheduled post. By the time the platform was back up, my mood had shifted and I no longer felt as salty about Deutsche Bahn. I’ll save my rant about the ICE trains for another day. In the meantime, please enjoy this Monday post about track cycling at the Velodrom Berlin.
I fell down an Internet rabbit hole on Saturday after reading a factoid in the latest issue of 20 Percent Berlin.
In his post about the anniversary of the first six-day track cycling race in Europe, Andrew mentioned the steher races - in which cyclists draft behind partners riding motorcycles around a closed track. (The motorcycle riders stand to maximize the draft - giving it the name.)
I had never seen or heard of such a thing. If you watch the video above, it almost looks like the bike is tethered to the motorcycle in front of it. They ride that close together. How does that work? And, who thought of doing it the first time?
I had so many questions.
