velo.nino.ru was a website for Nizhny Novgorod cyclists that lived on the nino.ru domain from November 2002. Over nineteen years, two different websites stood at this address: first "Nizhny Novgorod Velo Project," closed by its author in 2004, then "Bicycle Nizhny" — with routes, competitions, reviews of bike shops, and a forum. The web archive holds 9,066 pages from the two of them, the last captured on September 23, 2021 [1].
"Nizhny Novgorod Velo Project"
The first site was built around trip reports. The list of routes includes "Via Tarasikha," a solo 340-kilometer road marathon, a bike ride to Lake Svetloyar, a bike-and-boat trip, the start of the road season, bikers at Schelokovsky Khutor, and the winter training session "Night Winter Snow" [2]. Alongside these were polls, a forum, photo galleries, and the "unsorted riders list," a roster of participants in which people appeared by name and nickname.
A separate section covered the city's bike shops: Rockring, VELOCITY, Velomaster, Trial-Sport, Planeta-X, Sport-Master, and Titan [2]. The news for July 2004 includes the first bicycle orienteering competition in Nizhny Novgorod, "Velostreet 2004," starting from Oktyabrskaya Square, and a report that the cyclist Zef Zhegar, who set out from Brest on May 1, reached Vladivostok on July 6 [2].
It was there, on the home page, that the author announced the closure: "I don't like quietly dying sites, so the project will be closed soon" — with a promise to preserve the reports and the riders list and hand them over to other people. Questions were to be sent to bav@graphit.ru [2], meaning the site was run by someone from the same Graphit web studio that designed the neighboring sites on the domain.
"Bicycle Nizhny"
The second site at the same address was larger: "News," "Bicycle Review," "Bike Shops," "Articles," "Competitions," "Where to Ride," "Travel," "Photo Gallery," "Video Gallery," "Humor," "Riders list," "Links," "Forum," and member login [3]. At the bottom was the line "Copyright 2003–2006 Bicycle Nizhny" and an ICQ number for contact.
It described competitions in detail, with date, place, and discipline: a dual slalom in Kuznechikha on September 14, 2003, the first stage of the season there on June 4, 2006, with a report on it ("we got by without serious injuries, although there was plenty of spectacle"), and "Velocountry 2006" on June 17 — a bicycle orienteering competition that "lets you get to know your region better" [3].
The routes were recorded in a sporting spirit too. On June 14, 2006, the site reported on a ride titled "To the Shukhov Tower, or Field Tests for Road Cyclists": Nizhny Novgorod — Sartakovo — Babino — Shukhov Tower — Dzerzhinsk — Nizhny Novgorod, 105 kilometers in six hours [3]. The archive of the site also preserves the ride tracks themselves — ride_gps.zip files in the object storage [1].
What It Meant to the City
The site worked as the city's bulletin board for cyclists. It announced the opening of the Liniya Ekstrima club on June 1, 2006, and of a new dot.SPORT store at 118 Belinsky Street, with a phone number and opening hours; it invited people to the historical-tourist bike marathon "Road of Freedom," dedicated to the fifteenth anniversary of the restoration of the state flag, and to a ride for the memorial day of citizen Minin on May 21, 2006 [3].
On July 9, 2006, a warning appeared on the main page: over the past month, attempts on bicycles and their owners had grown sharply more frequent, both in the Zarechye part of the city and in the center [3]. Such entries are something you will not find in the newspapers of the time or in official reports: everyday city life, recorded by those it affected.
How It Ended
After 2006 the site no longer changed noticeably, but the address kept responding until the very end of the domain: the last snapshot of its pages is dated September 23, 2021 [1]. Where the community moved to cannot be determined from the surviving materials.
The Main Page by Year
Sources
- web.archive.org (archive)
- web.archive.org — "Nizhny Novgorod Bicycle Project," snapshot of July 27, 2004 (archive)
- web.archive.org — "Bicycle Nizhny," snapshot of July 18, 2006 (archive)