PEROXIDE blond Ian George has really been turning heads on the cycle track.

The Cross Hills based cyclist decided he needed a new challenge when he hit 30-years-of-age - and turned into a racing animal at the world famous Manchester Velodrome.

Now Ian - nicknamed Gorgeous by his team mates - he is setting track racing ablaze with his explosive sprint racing at the super-fast indoor circuit.

Already he has scored well with top class rides in the National sprint series at tracks around the country and this week will join his team mates in the Yasumitsu-Schalpp squad for an assault on the British national track cycling titles.

The event is being held at Manchester Velodrome and Ian aims to gain a medal place in the sprint and the Olympic Sprint - track cycling disciplines in which Great Britain have earned medals at Olympic and World level.

"I love the sport and I seem to be well suited to it. I'm also in a team made up of sprinters, so I have great moral support," he said.

Ian rides a fixed gear bike and on the track and can find himself hurtling round the oval at over 50mph, in the middle of pack of racers, on a machine which doesn't have brakes.

"It is the nearest thing there is to full contact racing and it gives a real adrenalin buz," Ian said.

And after spending years on the ski slopes in winter and racing round the alps on a mountain bike in summer he knows quite a bit about adrenalin sports.

After seven years in the French Alps, where he worked as a mountain bike guide in the summer, he was invited to work in a ski resort in New Zealand and also packed his bike along with other luggage. He cycled the remote trails of his new homeland and after 1 years travelled to Australia where he put his skills as a bike mechanic to work at a cycle shop in Sydney.

He also went road racing around Australia before the pull of adventure had him on the move again.

This time he headed for the Himalayas and spent three months cycling over 2,000 miles around India and Nepal. His travels took him - and his bike - to an altitude of over 5 thousand metres where the air is punishingly thin.

He completed the Anapurna Circuit, a trekking route usually completed by only the toughest mountaineers. While the walkers he saw had mountains of gear carried by sherpas or yaks, Ian and his companion took a tiny amount of gear as they cycled the 200-mile route.

But after returning to the UK after covering thousands of miles he turned to sprint cycling, specialising in just 750 metres, three laps of the Manchester track.

"I had tried most types of cycling after starting out road racing in Lincoln and was looking for a new challenge. On my 30th birthday last December I decided to have a go on the Velodrome track, and I was totally hooked.

"It's a great high speed sport with riders travelling at up to 55mph with only one gear and no brakes, and quite often a dozen or so people on the track.

"I was already reasonably fit and started doing fairly well," Ian said.

He was fifth in the National Sprint League and goes into the British Cycling Federation's National Track Championships with hopes of picking up medals.

He will also be taking on the best senior riders from around the globe in the World Masters Championships which are also being held at the Manchester track in October.

Ian had to miss several national championship races because he cannot afford to compete around the country, and hopes to attract sponsorship from local businesses.

He can be contacted at work at Terrain Cycles in Cross Hills on 0870-444369.