Tachikawa Keirin Velodrome: History, Guide and the Grand Prix’s Home

Tachikawa’s velodrome opened in 1951 to rebuild a war-damaged city. It gave the city over 130 billion yen and is where Japan’s 100-million-yen Grand Prix began.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

Tachikawa’s Central Library was built by bicycles. So was the city gymnasium in Shibasaki, and the buildings of several elementary and junior high schools, and the waste-treatment plant, and, bit by bit, the streets around the station.

Does that sound like an exaggeration? Tachikawa City says so itself. From its opening up to fiscal 2010, the city-run keirin, it writes, transferred more than 130 billion yen from its profits into the city’s general budget, and that money became libraries, gymnasiums and schools.

Keirin (競輪, “racing wheels”) is Japan’s own form of track-cycling race, run on banked oval tracks, on which spectators can legally bet. As we will see, the races are staged by local governments.

If someone asks me what there is in Tachikawa (立川), a city in western Tokyo, I will probably hesitate a little. I can say there is Showa Kinen Park, there is a monorail, and I can already see “…and?” written on the other person’s face. But there is one thing I must not forget to mention. The 100-million-yen race that keirin fans all over Japan watch with bated breath at the end of every year began in this town.

Why did a city in ruins bet its future on bicycles? And what did that bet leave the town? I leave the station by the North Exit and start walking east.

To Tachikawa Keirin, a 15-minute walk from the station

The address of Tachikawa Keirin Velodrome is 3-32-5 Akebonocho, Tachikawa. The official website says it is a 15-minute walk from JR Tachikawa Station and from Tachikawa-Kita Station on the Tama Monorail. On race days a free bus also runs from in front of Tachikawa-Kita Station, taking about ten minutes. You can also get there from Tamagawa-Josui Station on the Seibu Line, about fifteen minutes by free bus.

Leaving the bustle in front of the station and heading north, the commercial buildings gradually get lower and the town becomes mostly residential. Then a big wall of grandstand appears. The official website calls the place “Tachikawa Keirin” with the word keirin written in soft, rounded hiragana script rather than the stiffer kanji. That softness somehow reminds me of the sign at a municipal swimming pool. People call it Tachikawa Keirinjō (velodrome) or Tachikawa Keirin, and either will do.

What, by the way, is keirin for? For a long time I thought it was simply publicly run gambling. Open the law, and another face appears.

1951: a city in ruins chose the bicycle

Keirin is held under a law called the Bicycle Racing Act. Among its purposes, alongside improving bicycles and other machines, promoting their export, and advancing physical education and other public benefits, the Act lists “putting local government finances on a sound footing.” In other words, keirin was designed from the start as a way to restore the finances of local authorities.

According to material compiled by the Tokyo Eleven Cities Keirin Business Association and Tachikawa City’s Public Racing Department, keirin began in 1948 at Kokura Velodrome in Kyushu, Japan’s southern main island. Tachikawa Keirin opened in October 1951. It was the 59th in Japan. Fifty-nine velodromes in little more than three years from Kokura’s first. That speed alone shows how desperately post-war local governments were looking for revenue.

Tachikawa had good reason for desperation. According to records of war damage kept by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Tachikawa, home to an army airfield and munitions factories, was bombed thirteen times from 16 February 1945. The raid on 4 April caused heavy damage, centred on the Fujimicho district. When the war ended, the airfield was requisitioned by the US military.

Tachikawa City’s report “The Future of the Tachikawa Keirin Business” (December 2011) states the purpose of the velodrome like this: it was opened in 1951 for post-war reconstruction, to build educational facilities, roads, sewers and a city hall. Build schools, lay roads, run sewers, put up a city hall; and let the bicycles earn the money for it. That was the first job given to this velodrome.

In 1951 there was still a US military base in the very middle of Tachikawa. The base would not be fully returned until 1977. Outside the base’s wire fence, the city was searching for a way to build the town with its own strength. One of those ways was a 400-metre oval.

The keirin system is more tangled than it looks from outside. According to a diagram in the city’s report, the national Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry provides guidance and oversight; the JKA, a public-interest foundation, registers, assigns and trains the riders; the running of the races themselves is entrusted to the Japan Keirin Racing Commission; and the riders belong to the Japan Keirin Riders’ Association. In the middle sits the local authority known as the “organiser.” In Tachikawa’s case, that is Tachikawa City. The city signs participation contracts with riders, pays the prize money and sells the betting tickets. The organiser of Tachikawa Keirin, in other words, is city hall. The same sender who posts you your resident tax bill is also the house running the year-end 100-million-yen race.

So how much did that oval actually give back to the town?

130 billion yen built libraries and schools

According to Tachikawa City, from its opening to fiscal 2010 the city’s keirin sold a staggering 1.6 trillion yen in betting tickets. From the profits, more than 130 billion yen went into the city’s general budget. The association and city material mentioned above put the total transferred to the general budget, as of 2021, at about 133 billion yen.

The city lists the uses concretely, too: the Shibasaki Citizens’ Gymnasium, the General Welfare Centre, the Central Library, elementary and junior high school buildings and gyms, waste-treatment facilities, the redevelopment of the area around Tachikawa Station and of the former base land, and the water and sewer systems. Anyone who grew up in Tachikawa has made use of at least one of these. Children who fell over on a gym floor, dozed off in the library, or gazed at the schoolyard from a classroom window were, without knowing it, running up a debt to the riders on their bicycles. If I borrow a book from this town’s library, I owe twice: once for the book, once to keirin.

The biggest single-year transfer was 7.8 billion yen, in fiscal 1989. Seven point eight billion in one year. There was a time when a large lump arrived in the city’s purse almost every year.

The velodrome also used its earnings to improve itself. According to the city’s report, the main building went up in 1966, the central grandstand in 1979, and the back stand in 1991. In the early days of keirin, tickets were sold only at the track, and attendance kept rising until the early 1970s. So Tachikawa, the report says, upgraded its facilities ahead of other velodromes. It built early, so many people came. Many people came, so it could build more.

The crowds were, by today’s standards, on another scale. According to the association and city material, Tachikawa Keirin’s peak attendance was in fiscal 1974: 1.52 million people a year. Sales peaked a little later, in fiscal 1992, at 117.2 billion yen.

There is a clear reason for the bustle of the Showa-era (1926–1989) velodrome. According to the city’s report, when keirin began, betting tickets were sold only inside the velodrome. Selling tickets for other tracks’ races off-site began in some places around 1972, and telephone betting in 1987. In those days, anyone who wanted to bet on a race had to walk from Tachikawa Station through the streets of Akebonocho to the stands on their own two feet. On race days, the road from the North Exit to the velodrome must have been a long line of hundreds of thousands of backs a year, all facing the same way. Walk the same road today and what you mostly hear are the everyday sounds of a residential neighbourhood.

Nor did the grandstand belong to Tachikawa alone. According to the city’s report, from fiscal 1971 to fiscal 2006 the Tokyo Cities Revenue Business Association, made up of eight cities (Mitaka, Nishitokyo, Fussa, Komae, Higashiyamato, Kiyose, Higashikurume and Musashimurayama), staged five race meetings a year at Tachikawa. The legs of the riders who circled Tachikawa’s track were quietly warming the purses of cities all over the Tama area (the part of Tokyo west of the 23 central wards), too.

It all sounds like good-times stories. But what made this velodrome’s name known across Japan was not the size of its sales. It was a single race at the end of the year. Before we get to it, let us look at the oval the riders race on.

The 400-metre bank and the 31-degree wall

A keirin track is called a “bank.” According to the facilities guide on the official website, Tachikawa’s bank is a standard 400 metres per lap, with a 58-metre home straight. Because the straight is long, the official site explains, riders who come from behind are considered to have the advantage.

What catches the eye is the tilt. On the straights the slope is 2 degrees, 17 minutes and 27 seconds. But in the middle of the bends, at the “centre,” it is 31 degrees, 13 minutes and 6 seconds. Thirty-one degrees. On a ski slope it would probably carry an experts-only sign, and the riders tear across it on bicycles. I am confident I would slide off it just standing still.

In the official table, the type of curve is given as a “lemniscate curve,” the name mathematicians give to a curve shaped like a figure eight lying on its side. A mathematical term sits casually in a velodrome’s guide. The betting oval is, in fact, made of lines drawn by equations.

The widths are precisely fixed, too: 9.66 metres on the home side, 8.66 metres on the back side, 7.70 metres at the centre. Looking at numbers measured to the decimal point reminds you that before it is a place for betting, this is a precisely designed sports arena.

The Numbers: Tachikawa Keirin

• 1951 — the year it opened, 59th in Japan. Only three years from Kokura’s No. 1 to this.
• 31° 13′ 6″ — the tilt at the centre of the bends. A wall measured to the minute and second, which the riders pass in a few seconds.
• 58 metres — the length of the home straight. For a rider coming from behind, these 58 metres can be an eternity or an instant.
• 21 — the number of times the KEIRIN Grand Prix has been held in Tachikawa. More than double the runner-up.
• 30,600 — the capacity of the grandstand before renovation. Around 2011, a normal race day drew roughly 4,000 to 5,000 people. Plenty of elbow room each.
• Over 130 billion yen — the total transferred to the city’s general budget. How many library books that comes to, I prefer not to calculate.

Wanderer’s Quiz

At the steepest point of Tachikawa’s bends, the centre, roughly how steep is the bank?

• A. About 11 degrees
• B. About 21 degrees
• C. About 31 degrees

The answer comes near the end of this article.

The KEIRIN Grand Prix began in Tachikawa

Every year on 30 December, there is a one-off, winner-takes-all race in which only the nine riders who shone that year compete. It is the KEIRIN Grand Prix. The winner’s prize today is more than 100 million yen.

Tachikawa City describes this race as “the year-end Grand Prix whose birthplace is Tachikawa Keirin.” It began on 30 December 1985. The first edition was held in Tachikawa, and the winner was Koichi Nakano. Wikipedia writes that this “KEIRIN Grand Prix ’85” was planned suddenly, and that Tachikawa became its birthplace because it agreed to host it. Someone abruptly proposed a big year-end showdown, and Tachikawa, near the end of the Showa era, said, “We’ll do it.” That one act of saying yes became a year-end institution that has lasted forty years.

More than forty years on, counting through the list of past editions published by the sports newspaper Daily Sports, Tachikawa was the venue for 22 of the 41 Grand Prix races up to 2025. Of those, the fifth edition in 1989 was scheduled for Tachikawa but cancelled, so the race was actually run there 21 times. The next most frequent venues are Hiratsuka with 10 and Keiokaku with 5, which means Tachikawa has hosted more than twice as often as the runner-up. In the 1990s especially, it was held in Tachikawa eight years running, from 1993 to 2000. Every year, at the western edge of Tokyo, came the day that decided Japan’s best.

Pick out Tachikawa’s Grand Prix years in the 21st century from the same list: 2002, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 and 2023. Roughly once every three years, the big year-end race comes home to its birthplace. The 2019 winner was Shintaro Sato, and in 2023 it was Yuji Matsuura. Even since the race began rotating, Tachikawa has never given up its place as the most frequent host.

The town has welcomed other major races, too. According to Tachikawa City, the first was the 9th Kanto-Koshinetsu Regional Championship in fiscal 1956. Since then it has held the Japan Championship six times, in fiscal 1978, 1984, 1987, 1992, 2001 and 2005, and the All-Star race in fiscal 1981.

The Grand Prix was special for the city’s purse too. In the city’s 2011 estimate, holding the Grand Prix once was expected to bring in a profit of 400 to 600 million yen. In fiscal 2009, ordinary ticket sales fell below 20 billion yen; the following year, fiscal 2010, when it held the Grand Prix, they recovered to 30.4 billion. A few days at the end of the year balance the books for the whole year. I have seen the same thing in a household account book somewhere. Only the number of zeros is different.

But more and more velodromes besides Tachikawa wanted to host the Grand Prix. The city’s report says that in recent years hosting has been coordinated with other tracks, so it now comes round once every few years. The birthplace is now also one stop on a rotation.

And for Tachikawa Keirin, too, a quiet winter had arrived.