A road racer, upon first heading out to the track, may be tempted to laugh behind the back of any of the several man-mountains lining up next to him on the track: 'Surely that slobbish chappy cannot pilot his bicycle as well as me; I must be half his weight.' But this road racer has forgotten that in track racing there are no hills, and that any one of the monsters next to him can put out enough turn on all of the lights in a small city.

Track racing is extremely fast: the banked oval track is between 250-500m long; several events are ridden behind two-stroke motorbikes called dernies. Track bikes have a fixed gear (meaning you can't stop pedalling) and no brakes; the position on the bike is lower and more aerodynamic than that of a road bike.

Track racing has both sprints, time trials and endurance events. The sprint events include match sprint, in which the two competitors ride best of three sprints and the keirin, in which the bunch rides winds up for the sprint behind a derny, before the derny pulls off and the riders contest the sprint at high speed. The endurance events include the points race and the Madison; in the Madison, teams of two riders race one at a time, slinging eachother into action when they switch off.