TO Crit Race Report

Sunday was the Toronto Criterium in the St. Lawrence Market. This race has a long history and was once quite prestigious taking place at a prime evening time drawing large crowds, offering big prizes and attracting many pros. This year was much more low key, essentially like any other Ontario regional level race.

The course is a 4-corner block with Front Street and the Esplanade running parallel at slightly different elevations making for a fast downhill corner 2 from Scott St onto the Esplanade and a small rise between corners 3 and 4 on Market St. Corners 2 and 4 are just greater than 90° and proved to be the most important. I probably clipped a pedal in corner 4 about three times during the race, but never more than enough to cause the rear wheel to skip just slightly.

The race started pretty fast from the gun, though my poor warmup do to a trainer malfunction may have influenced my perception of this. It was not bad though and within a few laps I was sitting comfortably in the front half of the group. We were combined not only with the Juniors as usual, but also the Master 2 Men and Elite Women. With some strong crit racers among the M2s, there were a few wheels I knew I should follow in addition to those in Senior 3 I had to watch.

The race was largely uneventful with no moves going clear for any distance. I put a couple digs in on the front to help string things out when I felt like it, and never felt in any real difficulty. At about the halfway mark a prime was announced and I stuck to my plan of not going for it, but trying to go with any counter attacks that followed or to bridge to a break if one formed. Edgars Apse of the Darkhorse Flyers soloed away for the prime and immediately after the line a Senior 3 rider (David Grose, Bikesports) attacked and I was quick to follow hoping we could bridge to Edgars and get a rotation going. Ideally a couple M2s would have followed but that was not the case. We reached Edgars on the backside of the course but nobody was keen to get the move going. I pulled through and gestured for someone to come around next time down the start/finish, but they had sat up and we quickly reintegrated into the bunch.

Nothing much happened for the remainder of the race until 3 to go when Etzl and Zottl attacked and went clear (and eventually went on to win). Because the move only contained Juniors the majority of the field was happy to let them go and set up for the bunch sprint. On the backside one of the Juniors from a rival team was begging me to come around, but there was no way I was chasing down a couple of Juniors nevermind a fellow SCCC rider.

I came through corner 3 on the bell lap in a great position but mistakingly took a fairly central line through the last corner. I got up to sprint but quickly found myself boxed in behind 2 M2s and a Junior with 150 m to go, watching Scott (Lapdogs) ride up the right to take 3rd in Senior 3 while I sat down and cruised in for 4th. I am really annoyed at myself for poor line choice leaving me nowhere to open up the sprint, but this was the first real crit I had done in a couple years and I still have much to learn. Next time I will know better!

Mostly I was reminded how much I like crit racing and while different, how it offers many of the same stimuli as cross. Now I can't wait for the last few crits on the calendar, and then CROSS SEASON.