HOW AN INNER CITY PUMP TRACK IS CHANGING LIVES IN LOS ANGELES

Of the nearly 9.9 million residents of Los Angeles County, the 108,000-person population of Inglewood seems insignificant. But, if you zoom in, you’ll find it’s not. Inglewood is the home of SoFi Stadium, where the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers play NFL football games. Also in the same neighborhood is the Kia Forum concert hall and events center, where you can go to watch all sorts of celebrities perform for the masses. Inglewood also borders LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) on its east side.

So, why are we talking so much about Inglewood? What’s so special about it? Well, if you were to zoom in a little more on the northeastern corner of the city’s footprint, you’d find a little place called Edward Vincent Jr. Park. This 55-acre plot of land plays host to a wide variety of family friendly recreation centers, like dedicated fields for baseball, soccer and football; courts for basketball and tennis; a swimming pool; a small amphitheater; multiple playgrounds; a skatepark; and now two brand-new Velosolutions pump tracks.

 

ORIGINS
To talk about the Inglewood pump track is to talk about Eliot Jackson and the Grow Cycling Foundation. If you don’t know anything about Eliot Jackson, here’s a crash course. Eliot grew up in Oklahoma and moved to California when he was still young. He raced motocross until he was 15, winning multiple national championships riding for Kawasaki.

In 2008 he got invited to ride mountain bikes with a friend in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, and the rest is history. He spent the next few years racing with the eventual goal of racing DH World Cups and traveling the world with his bike.

In 2010, Eliot procured his USA Cycling (USAC) pro license by winning the category 1 downhill race at the famous Sea Otter Classic. That year was full of struggles for Eliot as he tried and failed to earn enough UCI points to qualify for a World Cup race, but there was a loophole he jumped through that sent him straight to the Val di Sole World Cup race in Italy a week later. In that race he was able to qualify for the finals, which led him to be picked up by Yeti for the following season’s racing.

This is where Eliot Jackson’s career racing bikes started, and he would go on to achieve some pretty impressive things in that World Cup career, including multiple top-20 placements, as well as a top 10. Throughout all of that, though, something was staring him in the face—he was the only Black rider on the start line.

Eliot and his mother, Joi Jackson, started Grow Cycling as an organization aimed at bringing more diversity to the racially uniform sport of mountain biking. Grow’s goal is to bring mountain biking to more places and create opportunities for riders and kids of racial and cultural diversity who may not have otherwise been introduced to our sport.

 

WHY INGLEWOOD?
Inglewood is very centrally located in Los Angeles, which means it has the potential to serve more people than other locations, but that’s not the main reason Grow Cycling chose this city. They chose it for its cultural diversity, as well as the economic benefits an attraction like this could bring.

According to the Grow Cycling website (www.growcyclingfoundation.org), they chose the community of Inglewood because “economical and culturally diverse social networks can enhance financial well-being by as much as 40 percent over a lifetime for children of color.”

They’ve chosen to invest in the area for the economic and social benefit of the community and forecast the pump track to serve an estimated 250,000 users annually with most of them being kids. If it were to benefit even a small percentage of those people, they will have done their job and hopefully helped convince other communities that may be on the fence to put something like this in one of their parks.

Grow Cycling wants to build what they’re calling a world-class cycling ecosystem in Inglewood. They say this will happen with the help of the previously mentioned economic and culturally diverse social networks and will help make this place a sustainable hub of opportunities for the greater Inglewood community. They’ve started getting programs in schools to pique kids’ interests and recently spent a bit of time raising money to repair bikes for kids so they can ride instead of having to throw said bikes in the garbage.

 

RED TAPE
To build a pump track anywhere, there is a lot of red tape to go through to get approval. The Grow Cycling Foundation consisting of Eliot Jackson (Chairman), Katie Holden (Vice Chairwoman) and Joi Jackson (President) had to pitch a proposal to the city of Inglewood and its Parks Department, which can be read in a PDF found on the Inglewood city government website.

In this proposal, Grow Cycling lays out what a pump track is with its advantages, points out the success of such tracks in other cities around California, and highlights why it would be a great addition to the Inglewood community.

Grow Cycling also committed to 100 percent funding the project to its completion so the city of Inglewood wouldn’t have to pay a penny of taxpayer dollars. The deal was that Grow Cycling would cover the 1.2-million-dollar price tag if the city would commit its support by maintaining and promoting the track on its social media outlets, in schools, and through media campaigns so it might grow and so people would take advantage of the gift that has been given.

The section of the park they proposed to build the pump track was often known as the ugliest area of the park, which would continuously turn into a bog in inclement weather. They chose to work with Velosolutions, because they’re the best in the business and the company trusted by the UCI to build the World Championships pump track each year—something that’s on the list of things to host on this track. With Velosolutions’ expert help, the pump track would add much-needed drainage and turn that ugly section of the park into one of the most beautiful sections, which is exactly what they did.

 

FINANCIAL SUPPORT
Raising 1.2 million dollars is a heavy ask, especially in today’s struggling economy, but the mountain bike industry is an incredible community. In the time it took to raise the money, we saw notable pros, popular social media influencers and large corporations all banding together to make it happen. There were a lot of bikes given away, as well as some tools, some race winnings donated, and campaigns designed and executed to raise as much money as possible.

It was a real team effort and a real testament to how much things like this mean to those already in the mountain bike community. It shows that all we want is to help people find out just how much fun the sport of mountain biking is.

If you want to help the Grow Cycling Foundation with their future projects, you can visit their website and click the “Donate” button. You can pledge either a one-time or monthly giving amount that will be put towards the organization’s future projects.

 

A TRACK FOR EVERY LEVEL
As we mentioned previously, there are two Velosolutions tracks at Edward Vincent Jr. Park. The Woodlands track, the first one you see when walking up, is the smaller of the two and catered more towards the younger or more beginner crowd. It’s designed with smaller pump bumps, less technical corners and more achievable jumps. This track is excellent for developing skills, and learning to pump, jump and corner in a safe manner. It’s a little bit tighter to navigate at speed, but it’s a great place to warm up and find your flow before moving on to the bigger, more intimidating track.

The World Championship track is much bigger and caters to a higher-level rider group. This is where we saw the most high-level action and where we were able to set more goals to accomplish, like jumping the two step-ups/step-downs (depending which way you’re going) in the center of the track. Finding a flow on this track is hard, and it feels long when at speed. The bowl corners are steep but can also be used as fly-outs for learning tricks onto the massive decks that have been built. The whole thing is laid out in a very rider-friendly configuration that makes it easy to see where everyone on the track is before dropping in so you’re not accidentally running into someone midway through your run. It was also very smooth and the place where most of the skateboarders and scooter riders were spending their time cruising around. It’s an easy track to get creative on, so if you get bored of doing the same circuit over and over, you can just pop into a manual on the deck or hit a gap from one berm to another. It’s really a work of art.

 

EVENT POTENTIAL
In their proposal, Grow Cycling pointed out the potential for some pretty cool events; there’s even talk of the Pump Track World Championships being held there at some point in the future. The track is laid out in a race configuration that would be perfect for setting fast laps, and the surrounding area has plenty of space to host a large crowd of spectators.

That’s one potential future event, but until that happens, the track is slated to host localized events and ride days where there might be pros, food and music with the goal of having a good time pumping around the track with friends. These events are sure to bring the community together and help get more people of all races, ages, and cultures into action sports and, more specifically, the sport of mountain biking.

APPS, SOCIAL MEDIA AND A WEBSITE
To spread awareness of this epic track, Grow Cycling has taken it upon themselves to create a comprehensive app and a website to feed information to the public. There is also content on most social media platforms with event announcements and updates being posted regularly as time goes on.

By far the coolest thing they’ve developed for the users of the track is the interactive app. Its function is multifaceted with an events calendar, career portal, social media links and a quick blurb about the goal of the Grow Cycling Foundation. On the opening page, you’re able to see if the park is open or closed, and how much more time it will be open that day, along with a link to an external site so you can check for mandatory closures so you can know when not to go.

Just below that is the events notifier, and below that is the careers portal. Within this section, you’re able to scroll through MTB-industry career opportunities and see what companies are hiring right now. If you hit the “View More” button, it’ll take you to another Grow Cycling site dedicated to helping people find mountain bike industry jobs, as well as allowing employers to post job openings.

At the time of writing this article, there were job listings from Transition Bikes (a bike shop in San Jose, California), Jenson USA, SRAM and more, each with a detailed description of what they want, potential salary or hourly wage, as well as a detailed job description. Grow Cycling is all about creating opportunities where before there was never a chance, and this section of the Inglewood Pump Track app reflects that well.

Our favorite function of the app is the GPS-monitored check-in feature and visit counter. This feature has you create a login with a username, which then generates a membership card with your membership number. After nearly two months of the track being open, we created our account and became member number 461. We currently have only one check-in and have an IP (Inglewood Pump Track) Level 1 rating and would need to go nine more times to get up to Level 2.

They also have this thing called the “Rideprint,” which is a grid of grey boxes that turn red one by one each time you check in with the goal of coloring in the entire grid. They also have an all-time record of consecutive days visited listed above the box grid. The best part about this well-designed app is that it’s free! All you need is a smartphone and something with wheels.

 

MORE THAN JUST BIKE TIRES
There are a lot of amazing benefits to making a pump track out of asphalt, one of which is the way it is able to host wheels of all sizes and materials. When we were there, throughout the day we saw skateboarders, scooter riders and bike riders all sharing the same course in harmony. At one point, a skater brought out a nifty timing system and was challenging the whole park to have a go racing against the clock. All you had to do was slap a button as you passed or have a friend do it for you if you’re riding a bike, and the clock starts ticking.

It was interesting to see how the different wheel sizes stacked up against each other and was a super-great community builder with everyone having a great time challenging themselves to go as fast as they could around the World Championship track. The fastest time was set by a mountain bike that day, but the next day it could’ve been a skateboard, BMX bike or any of the other wheeled instruments around. It was an awesome experience.

GETTING PEOPLE INTO THE SPORT
This project was designed, constructed and opened for the people of Inglewood, but when we were there, we talked to people who had come from all over L.A. to enjoy the track. One kid told us he rode 10 miles one way through the city streets to get there and would have to ride that same 10 miles back. He was killing it and using the pump track almost more as a skate park than a racetrack, which is highly encouraged in these areas. That’s the real beauty of these things. You don’t have to be a pro to ride them, and there’s no one exclusive skill learned when going. It can be just as much a skate park as it is a racecourse and, like the kid we just mentioned, a place to learn 360s out of the bowl corners. It’s as much about the imagination as it is about the riding itself.

Our favorite part of visiting the pump track on the days we did was watching new generations on push bikes, 16-inch BMX bikes or little scooters make their way around the track with smiles on their faces. These little ones, ranging in age from 2–5 years old, were just as welcome there as the best riders and were constantly cheered on as they passed. Fathers, mothers and siblings were all supporting each other, and though many little tip-overs happened, no one gave up, and they were always encouraged to get up and try again. We saw these kids as the future of a sport that originally may not have been available for them to try.

Some of the best riders at the Inglewood pump track can pull off high-flying tabletops.

GROW CYCLING FOUNDATION’S GOALS FOR THE FUTURE
This may be the first project to be completed by the Grow Cycling Foundation, but it’s certain not to be the last. With their ongoing goal of providing opportunities for kids and people in culturally and racially diverse areas, we’re sure to see them dipping their resources into even more effective ways of getting people hooked on the sport of mountain biking.

Grow Cycling is built on pillars of community, opportunity, education and access, which, in their words, builds a formula to “create a holistic approach to making cycling a world where everyone not only fits but belongs.” Right now it would seem they’re focused on small things within the community, like fundraising to help service kids’ bikes to keep the wheels spinning, as well as hosting small events at the pump track to help keep the stoke levels and community engagement high. So, sign up for their newsletter and keep on the lookout for their next venture, because we’re sure it’s going to be big.