Olympic Velodrome 

The velodrome is the home track of two of the city’s cycling clubs and is used for training and competition by amateur and elite cyclists alike. It also hosts the Finnish National Track Cycling Championships, and staged the 2006 European Cycle Messenger Championships and the Helsinki Grand Prix four times between 2015 and 2018. In recent times, the velodrome has been deemed unsuitable for official elite Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) events due to its unconventional length (400m) and outdated safety standards.

Open seven days a week to the general public, the venue also caters for lacrosse and field hockey in the summer months, and its artificial pitch is used by the Finnish capital’s American Football teams – the Helsinki Roosters and the Helsinki Wolverines – for their home games.

The Velodrome has a capacity of 7,000. The natural grass pitch at its centre was used for training by a number of football clubs prior to the venue’s refurbishment in the late 1990s. The functionalist concrete track was intended to be used at the 1940 Olympic Games, but as a result of the outbreak of World War Two and the subsequent cancellation of the 1940 Games, the velodrome was not completed until 1946. It staged four track cycling events at Helsinki 1952: the time trial, sprint, tandem and team pursuit.