Help ensure a good Eastway legacy

The Eastway Cycle Circuit, now sadly demolished, was legendary—the great Eddy Merckx raced there, and for many years it was one of the best cycle racing circuits in the country. Having cycle circuits is vital for racing in a country where road racing is so difficult because road closures are difficult to organise. This has really held back the development of the sport in the UK.

Not only that, but the Eastway held the unique distinction of being the only facility of its kind in Inner London. The London Velodrome at Herne Hill is the only other purpose-built cycle racing facility in Inner London, for track cycling.

It is not only for road racing that the Eastway was very important, but also for the Olympic discipline of cross-country mountain biking. It featured a very good off-road circuit within its well-landscaped grounds.

Now it is important to secure a lasting legacy that features all of the Olympic cycling disciplines.

With levels of cycling rising faster in London than any transport planners can predict, more and more people will become interested in cycle sport and they need world-class facilities to engage in it. The 2012 Olympics, with its Active Spectator Strategy, will see more people cycling to the Olympics than ever before.

It is all the more surprising and disappointing that the legacy planning applications now submitted feature a cycle circuit scaled down from 34ha to 10ha. This means that there is only an inadequate road circuit (a ‘U’ shape squashed against the A12 with its bad air quality) and no off-road circuit, only a mountain bike ‘demonstration area’, making racing impossible.

This is in spite of planning conditions having been won before which seemed to safeguard the Eastway’s future.

Help support the Eastway Users’ Group in campaigning for a continued legacy of the Eastway circuits and write to David Higgins, Chief Executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) (responsible for building the Games and the Legacy) Lord Sebastian Coe, chair of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic games (LOCOG), and Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport.

You can download a template letter by clicking on the link on the right of this page.

David Higgins can be contacted at:

London 2012
One Churchill Place
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LN

Lord Sebastian Coe can be contacted at:

LOCOG
One Churchill Place
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LN

Tessa Jowell can be contacted at:

264 Rosendale Road
London
SE24 9DL

There will also be a second round for submitting comments to the planning applications later this year, probably in May. We will publish tips for commenting on the applications then.