UPDATED: Scroll to end of post to watch video!
Bike racing rocked the North Park Blocks today thanks to the return of the Portland Criterium presented by Steeplejack Brewing.
There was food, a great DJ, a beer garden, solid announcers, lots of cool people and rad bikes — and of course all types of racing action. If you missed it, there’s more racing tomorrow as day two gets underway in The Lloyd.
Check out my full gallery below and stay tuned for a video coming soon.
Thanks for reading.
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Thank you so much for the photos!
I hope you will add more…
Quite simply one of the best events in downtown!!!
Cyanne Mason
Great pictures! But why are the men’s races so overrepresented compared to the women’s races? And nothing about the youth races?
Hi. First of all, this is me working on a weekend, and BikePortland is a one-person business. I was not able to attend the entire event — which was like nine hours long!!
So please understand I do my best to cover what I can when I can. Also, I actually waited between races for about a full hour precisely so that I could be there to cover the women’s event… and about 5 frames into it my main camera body had a major malfunction and stopped working. I only had a backup and it limited what I could shoot. Also, I have entire video coming up (as soon as I can get to it, but I got home late last night after being at this event so I could have dinner and an evening with my family and today is my daughter’s birthday) which will feature a lot of footage of women and women racing. Thanks for the comment.
I also wanted to explain why I’m touchy about this. My daughter is bike racing and experience discrimination or less support/resources compared to boys/men all the time. Her all-womens team, Valkyr, exist because the founders didn’t get any support or resources in their old mixed team (and these are top riders). Or the starting order for youth boys vs girls in cyclocross disadvantages the girls.
So thanks for featuring one of the Valkyr riders in your video!
Johnathan does not want anyone to talk about the injustice this BS is doing to women and girls.
The Lloyd Crit today was a nice event… Easy place to look at the bikes close up which is a reason I go. The days of old cheap beater crit bikes is obviously over, a lot of nice Bike bling on display for the crowd. I did see 2 rim brake bikes so there is still some old school out there.
I think more bike racing should include a drag queen sharing MC/Announcer duties. The several minutes discussion of leg shaving was priceless. Unfortunately I had to leave before the mayor came on and the inflatable costume ride arrived.
Announcer was great, the course also had a Tunnel ala Tour de France last day crit finish, which was probably fun for riders.
Hopefully an annual event, the park is a nice staging area.
Yes, Sunday really delivered on a proper Portland experience. Poison Waters had great chemistry with EVERYONE but then that’s kind of her thing. Mayor Wilson was there too.
Great photos, thanks for sharing!
Great weekend of racing, love the photos!