Outside Magazine

Odds are, if you live in the United States, you don’t follow professional cycling. Even if you do tune in to the Tour de France once a year, it’s unlikely you’ve heard of criterium, a spectator-friendly variation of road racing that takes place over multiple laps on a closed course. You probably didn’t know that although the format isn’t represented in the Olympic Games or on the UCI WorldTour calendar, most road races in this country are crits, and the discipline has developed its own distinctive style and vibrant scene here, which includes the premier USA Crits Series. All of this is too bad, because it means you almost certainly don’t know that crits are, in fact, a helluva lot of fun to watch. 

“It’s the most intense hour and a half of people pushing speeds of 40 miles an hour, inches away from each other,” says Justin Williams, pro cyclist and founder of the team L39ion (pronounced “legion”) of Los Angeles. “There are a hundred guys fighting for the same spot. There are crashes, there’s screaming, there’s yelling. It’s just this high-intensity, high-octane, in-your-face kind of sport.” In short, Williams explains, it’s extremely American: “If you love football, if you like watching people get smacked and run into each other or seeing people getting dunked on, you’ll like crit racing.”