Perak Cycling Association (PCA) president and Malaysian Cycling Federation vice-president Datuk Amarjit Singh has confirmed that an appeal by the PCA to the Perak state government to repair the Raykat Velodrome has been made. He also added that he hopes work can start sooner rather than later as Perak will jointly host SUKMA with Johore in 2018.
“The fact that cycling is considered as a high performance sports, let us not just focus on building new stadiums but also focus on restoring the current ones. I appeal to the (Perak) Menteri Besar to help us to fix Velodrome Rakyat,” he said in a statement.
The Rakyat Velodrome is in such an atrocious state that national cyclist cannot train given he track is not deemed safe enough to train. With the land surrounding the KL Velodrome sold to a property developer and the Nilai Velodrome not yet completed, national cyclists might have to train overseas as they have no proper training facilities to train.
Earlier on, Youth and Sports minister Khairy Jamaluddin said that the Velodrome will proceed with refurbishment.
“They gave us an estimate and we told them to cut it down. We reached a figure of RM7 million to get it at a usable condition but we don’t have a budget this year.
“It’s in the 11th Malaysia Plan and hopefully we can get it off the ground next year or the year after,” said Khairy, as quoted by The Malay Mail.
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