Grassroots track racing at its best.

It all started in a rather casual way: four good friends — George Garner, Bob Hansing, Jack Kemp and Charlie Morton, all avid cycling enthusiasts and successful businessmen in the bicycle industry — out on a ride, exchanging war stories and bragging a little to each other.

And then it happened. Bob Hansing, the youngster of the group and always coming up with a new idea or plan, posed a question half-aloud, almost rhetorical in nature: "What if we build our own velodrome?"

Later that year — it was 1953 — Charlie Morton was playing golf with a good friend from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who was a member of the West Valley Youth Organization, when the conversation turned to thoughts and plans for the future. When the golf game was finished, Charlie Morton had heard the story of a small piece of land owned by the Corps, located in the Sepulveda Dam Flood Control Basin, begging for someone to do something with it.

From these two conversations emerged a plan for building a velodrome for Southern California's cycling community. The four men, moving with conviction, formed a non-profit corporation and enlisted the help of the friends of cycling in Southern California. Importers, distributors, manufacturers, dealers and members of the cycling community were called upon for ideas, inspiration and, most important, donations.

Toward the end of the fifties, the four founders, each investing a large amount of their own money, made arrangements to secure the land and begin construction of what we know today as the Encino Velodrome.

As expected, the instant the final grading had been completed and Garner, Kemp and Morton stood together admiring their work, they looked up in silent amazement to see the fourth member, Bob Hansing, riding his bicycle on the newly graded dirt oval. And so it was that Bob Hansing went down in history as the first person to ride the Encino Velodrome.

The track was finished and covered with a layer of asphalt in time to start the 1961 cycling season. Racing at Encino continued and grew; enthusiasm and support was so high that by 1963 the four founders were able to cover the asphalt with a layer of cement.

George Garner, Bob Hansing, Jack Kemp and Charlie Morton left us with an example of what dreams, determination and hard work can produce. They also left us a legacy and a challenge. The legacy is the physical plant: the Encino Velodrome. The challenge is to continue to improve and develop the facility so that today's youth, and the youth of tomorrow, will have a place to learn and the opportunity to become champions like those who rode before them.