Novelda is a town in the interior of the province of Alicante that has always had cycling associations and relevant figures in the world of sports in this discipline. An area of small hills, dedicated to the exploitation of the marble quarries that have made it internationally known. In the 50s, the local cyclist Luis Navarro Amorós won a stage in the Cycling Tour of Spain, being the promoter of this sport in the town. Already in the 80s, the City Council designed a velodrome where young local promises could compete but whose works were never finished, becoming an unfinished concrete skeleton, among the many others that dot the Spanish territory. The Olympic medalist Julio Alberto Amores, slipped into it every weekend, and after cleaning and tidying up the track from the weekend bottles, he began to train.

To reactivate this project, we considered in the studio the way in which to intervene in the existing construction, a vandalized and very deteriorated structure, with remains of bonfires and full of graffiti. It had to be a minimal project and we bet on not renouncing the history that had been lived in this space. The project incorporates the concept of ruin, together with that of architectural recycling, generating a new opportunity for an abandoned and forgotten building, which is valued through an adjusted project due to its low budget.

We show the naked reality of the time that has passed through the velodrome. These forty years should not be ignored and we wanted them to form part of the new reality of the project. A sometimes uncomfortable truth but one that should serve as an example for future generations. We rehabilitated the old tunnels that connected the complex with the pelouse. The concrete, emaciated by the passing of the years and its subsequent vandalization and intended to be covered, is shown here as it is, highlighting its materiality. Existing graffiti was curated and worked on top of them using veils and layers of paint with geometric motifs, generating our own graffiti that covers part of the interior spaces, which accompany us on our inner journey.

On the underpass we located a small pavilion for the members of the cycling school. The piece is posed as a red origami that, like a game, folds over the track, generating a shadow space that highlights the performance by magnifying the existing ruin. A small icon, a symbol of the resilience of local cyclists, who with their example have managed to value the old ruin of the velodrome for future generations of athletes and who, thanks to their tenacity, have been able to see a dark chapter in the history of sport closed. from Alicante.