Learn More About criterium. Time Traveler for criterium The first known use of criterium was in See more words from the same year. From the Editors at Merriam-Webster. Statistics for criterium Look-up Popularity.
Style: MLA. More from Merriam-Webster on criterium Britannica. Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary. The keys to having fun in a criterium are being comfortable and confident in a pack and with high-speed cornering and accelerations. Fortunately, these are skills you can work on in local group rides and through specific skills sessions.
Whether you are riding in the Sunday morning group ride, the Tuesday night bike shop training ride, or a local criterium, the fundamental skills for riding safely and confidently in a pack are largely the same. With corners per lap, criteriums can be won and lost in the turns. To help kickstart summer racing, Steve M. To help illustrate, Patrick Daly , a sports and adventure photographer, provides images from the Athens Twilight Criterium, considered the biggest single day race in the U.
Instead of slogging up remote mountains, crits speed through downtown streets like getaway cars, taking tight turns at 30mph with fields of hundred racers or more. The biggest events are late at night, under stadium lights enveloped by spectators with raucous MCs and light shows. The experience is delightfully manic. February through October, across the country, every weekend, there are crits. If your usual group rides are getting boringly slow, and you thought Talladega Nights was a how-to video, racing crits might be the answer.
America sets the gold standard in race quality, creativity, and sheer volume of races. The United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands have full-blown professional criterium series.
In fact, there are over 25 different countries with criterium national championships, though sadly, it is not yet an Olympic event. Even our women's program has two Australians and a guest rider from the United Kingdom. Butcherbox Cycling , a team concentrating on American-style crits and cyclocross events with elite and club squads for both men and women, lives at the heart of this bike scene, and we want you to get in on the thrill with us.
A criterium is a lapped race on a closed circuit set in cities. Laps are usually a half-mile to 1. Total race distance is usually 15 miles beginner to 60 miles professional ; approximately 25 minutes to 1 hour 55 minutes.
Short and spicy. Top finishers get prizes. Like a video game, each level gets faster and longer as you progress.
The roller coaster feeling of zipping through turns in a pack is addictive, but the best part of racing is the atmosphere. Unlike a road race in the middle of nowhere, where slower riders are left out by themselves, every crit rider can keep going as long as the race is running. Plus, events are often staged in accessible neighborhoods civilization! The single defining aspect of a crit is a lot of turns. Go to a parking lot and make a mini-course with left and right degree turns.
Work into them faster and faster, building comfort. Next, lift the inside foot, and press down on the outside foot, that gives the tires traction. Because crits are held on small, usually urban courses, you can pick a nice spot and see the action every couple of minutes — making it easy to follow what is happening in the race and providing plenty of chances to check out your favorite rider. They go just about full throttle from start to finish, with attacks and counter-attacks happening all the time, and you have to be constantly alert to your position, who is around you, and how you are going to take that next corner.
There is no chance of getting bored in a crit race! In addition to the fun factor, crits are a great opportunity to develop fitness and bike-handling skills. You begin to corner with more confidence, you know exactly which lines to take to maintain your speed, and you no longer freak out about the close confines of the peloton.
Not everyone is quite as enthusiastic about this style of racing as I am however. The tight courses that a lot of criteriums are held on only exacerbates this problem, and a poorly laid out course can be downright dangerous regardless of your bike-handling aptitude. As we all know, crashing not only impacts you, but your bike as well.
In the event you are involved in a crash and break something, your replacement bill will only be a few hundred dollars, rather and a few thousand. And an added bonus — you can use the bike as your rain bike!
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