Not every episode needs an origin story; but I feel this one does. Episode 101 The Rules Committee was not originally my idea. I promise you, I fought this one hard. The original idea I pitched Adam Mills was about the value of training crits. I even had a pithy title for it— “10,000 corners.” It was a play on the title of Malcom Gladwell’s book “10,000 Hours.” However, Adam was insistent about his idea. He believed we needed to do an episode about rules and how they can be improved. It took close to three months; but he can be very persuasive and persistent.
As always, Mills was right. This episode was very much worth doing and I hope that it sets off a series of conversations on this show and elsewhere. One of the more frequent questions we are asked, aside from “where can I find the live stream to race X,” is “how do I learn the basics of criterium racing?” The perceived hope in this question is that we will have an answer that leads the questioner to a Wikipedia entry, or a Bicycling article that explains what a crit is, what are its rules, and where can they go to learn more about the teams and riders. Sadly, there is no ESPN.com or NFL.com that we can send people to for criterium racing. Heck, we cannot even agree on the proper spelling of prime . . . or is it preme?
Admittedly there are USA Cycling and UCI rule books. Their entries about criterium racing are not the easiest to find, but they are relatively straight forward to understand. However, as you will see below, they do not cover a lot of information. A lot of what we know about “the rules” is not really written but more guidance that has been passed down from cranky old riders, to slightly younger yet still somewhat cranky riders, and then to us. That is not exactly the best way to pass on knowledge or to encourage new people to try out this discipline of the sport. Peter Olejniczak was right in Episode 95 Mentorship— we need to write this stuff down.
Following Episode 101 we are going to start that effort- we are going to call it Crit Racing 105. Odd title, right? At the University of Kansas the general education classes started with 101; but if you were in the Honors Program your classes started at 105. So welcome to the Honors Program of criterium racing, you have just been accepted. However, setting up the curriculum is a little tough. It is one thing to start at the top with the most pressing issues; but that requires a foundational understanding of the basics. You cannot teach someone how the holding penalty works in football if they do not also understand that the field is 100 yards long and the game is divided into 4 quarters.
Let's start with some basics. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary a criterium is “a bicycle race of a specified number of laps on a closed course over public roads closed to normal traffic.” That definition seems easy enough to understand and matches the definitions from both the UCI and USAC. Criterium is a French word borrowed ultimately from the Romans and Greeks. According to Merriam-Webster, the first known use of the word related to bike racing was in 1970. This fact strikes us as odd given that the Tour of Somerville has been happening in New Jersey since 1940.
We can find records for U.S. national criterium champions for men’s and women’s races going back to 1980. Shockingly USA Cycling’s website only contains working links for historical national championships back as far as 2002. For the record, the 2022 national champions in the U.S. are Kendall Ryan of L39ion of Los Angeles, and Luke Lamperti of Trinity Racing. The race was run in Knoxville, TN, in June.
Crits are not unique to the United States. In the Spring of 2021 we did a series of posts on Instagram featuring the national champions of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Ireland. FYI, the champions for our Canadian neighbors this year were Maggie Coles-Lyster of DNA Pro Cycling and Michael Foley of Toronto Hustle who won their races in Edmonton, Alberta. The UK also has a criterium national championship; but in true British form they refer to it by a different name— “circuit racing.”
Criterium racing is not limited to Anglophone countries. As Adam Meyerson pointed out in his first appearance on the podcast, criterium racing happens throughout Europe too. Sometimes it is easily recognizable, and looks just like a US-based crit; and sometimes it appears more like a Red Hook or Mission Crit style fixed-gear race. Regardless the UCI Rule Book does cover criterium racing in Chapter VII of Part II. The UCI rules conceive of two methods of determining a winner 1) the leader at the last lap; or 2) lap numbers plus points earned in intermediate sprints.
Per the UCI rules a crit can be run on a circuit between 800 and 10,000 meters. The UCI does not layout a minimum race length; but rather a maximum race length based on the circuit size. As the circuit increases, so does the maximum length of the race. For the smaller sized circuits— 800-1,599 meters, the maximum length is 80 km. We chose that circuit size because it does interestingly compare to the average size of an American criterium, i.e., .5 miles to 1 mile. We are going to do a deeper dive into other provisions of these rules as we go further; but two interesting ones that pop out are 2.7.009 which requires organizers to provide teams with breakfast and hotels for any race ending after 10PM, and 2.7.010 which requires changing facilities for riders.
In the USA Cycling Rule Book, criterium racing is part of Chapter 3 and found under general road racing. The length of the circuit is listed as between 800 and 5,000 meters making the course at Spartanburg probably the shortest possible crit you may do at 820 meters. USAC does add a rule about course width that the UCI does not have. The minimum width in a crit is 7 meters. That converts to 23 feet and given the guidance from the National City Transportation Officials which says a lane width of 10 feet is appropriate for most urban settings, means slightly wider than 2 car lanes. There is no written rule governing the minimum or maximum lengths of a criterium. There were rules governing minimum lengths for races in the upgrade criteria; but they have been deleted.
An interesting rule, and one which was violated in 2021 at Athens is 3D4. Under that rule, riders off the front may not work with riders who have been dropped off the back. Meaning you cannot help your lapping teammate out by dropping yourself, effectively out of contention, and pacing them back up.
In both the case of the UCI and USAC, the written criterium rules are less than 3 complete pages. Together in fact the combine to only 5 pages. That is the equivalence of NFL Rule 8 covering the “Foreward Pass, Back Pass, Fumble” and just slightly longer than the MLB Rule 6.02 on “Pitcher Illegal Actions.” There is a separate policy statement from USAC about the free lap rule which we are will cover that is longer. We are going to dig much deeper into these rules; but these are the basics for what makes a criterium.