The 200m wooden track is bathed in a soothing natural light, yet its two corners still look like a fairground wall of death: their apexes tilt at 47 deg-rees But, again, we are in good hands. What do they discover in Aigle that they don’t back home? “I find British riders have been trained very scientifically,” says Fred, “but I try to help them with their psychology.”On my first-ever track session, I readily admit that my mind got the better of me at first. These “young champions”, as the WCC calls them, can each train for up to eight months at the centre, half of the costs being met by the IOC.Besides dragging me around the Alps for 95 miles, Magn?as seen a peloton of British track-cycling talent beat a path to his door, including sprinter Ross Edgar and the world sprint champion, Victoria Pendleton. As you wander from the WCC’s cafe to its library to its well-appointed gym, bright-eyed teenagers of all colours and sizes are practising their BMX starts or brushing up their English-language skills in the lecture theatres.

But the WCC is also an Olympic hothouse, drawing talented young cyclists from developing countries. So, on its indoor velodrome or outdoor BMX track are local recreational cyclists, kids and their parents. The WCC itself, however, is an eye-catching attempt to cultivate the sport at a grass-roots level. So ended a ride that Fred told me the centre’s best young cyclists used as a morning warm-up…The UCI department that spearheads the battle against performance-enhancing drugs in the upper echelons of the sport is housed at the WCC, and happy to discuss its campaign with visitors. Peter and Fred hunched over their handlebars and said something about 18 gears being quite enough.I toiled in their wake. We stopped once for a puncture (Fred), once for biscuits and Red Bull (me) and once for a water break (all of us), before we reached the ride’s climax, Ch?au d’Oex.

Snow-streaked peaks and plunging gorges were picturesque distractions, but after five-and-a-half hours and 135km on a saddle barely worth the name, I was glad to see the lines of the WCC’s prow-like entrance hove into view. Climbing a sharp incline, I flapped at my gear levers and wondered where the hell the easiest gears were Its “third ring”? It had none. Soon Fred, Peter and I were wheeling along towards Montreux.According to Peter, the sort of cyclist who would enjoy Velo Classic Tours’ WCC trip is “an enthusiast with some amateur race experience, somebody who is after an adventure but realistic about their fitness” He wasn’t kidding. Then Peter Easton of the New York-based Velo Classic Tours approached the WCC and found it was only too keen to throw its doors open to him and his clients.Velo Classic Tours’ 10-day Swiss Alps itinerary takes in sweeping rides along the shoreline of the Lake of Geneva, and long, 120km-plus rides up to the high-mountain resort towns of Verbier and Chamonix, over the French border.