The latest TV advertising campaign from Japan’s JKA, the governing body for the country’s pro keirin circuit, returns to the fundamentals of track cycling.

The premise is broadly the same as the New Year campaign, a telepathic conversation with a keirin pro.

A young professional man is dining alone, staring at his smartphone. He is watching a video of someone climbing the steep banking of a Japanese outdoor velodrome. ‘Isn’t that angle scary?’ he asks himself. A voice replies: ‘It’s thanks to the angle that you can ride at high speed.’

‘You don’t even have brakes?’ he asks. ‘No,’ comes the reply, because stopping would be dangerous.’

Then we see grainy video, a flashback to when our hero and his invisible interlocutor were friends, cycling to work. ‘But tomorrow, you will be riding as a professional.’

‘Young keirin athletes and their office friends recognise each other and improve each other,’ says the JKA in a press release. ‘Through this exchange, the content conveys the appeal of keirin that is not found in other sports.’

The ad ends on an uplifting note: ‘from now on, we’ll keep running together, turning every slope into strength.’

The soundtrack again features a song by GRe4N BOYZ, Japan’s leading dentistry-qualified boy band, whose identities remain a mystery.