In anticipation of this Saturday’s Red Hook Crit, a unique spectacle in which entrants race brakeless track bikes on urban streets, we asked pro cyclist, velojoy contributor and two-time Red Hook Crit champion Neil Bezdek to share his insights into the appeal of fixed-gear bicycles and why they’ve become NYC cultural icons.
After decades as an offbeat cultural icon for bike messengers and track racers, the fixed-gear bicycle has risen out of obscurity and into the mainstream. Whether you first discovered them saturating the pages of cycling blogs, clogging the streets of Williamsburg or creaking along under kamikaze messengers, you don’t have to be a cycling expert to notice the popularity of this strange breed of bicycle. But what isn’t so straightforward is why anyone would choose to ride one. Read more…
photo: federico stanzani
updated: 10.21
Congratulations to pro cyclist Neil Bezdek (crossing finish line, above right) for his magnificent ride to victory in the second annual Red Hook Criterium in Milano, Italy last Saturday. velojoy.com is so proud to have sponsored Neil along with fellow New York City-based partners Trimble Racing and Signature Cycles. The Italian edition of this Brooklyn-based event is a late-night, unsanctioned race of 18 laps around a short, technical course on the streets of an industrial section of Milan — track bikes mandatory, fixed-gear, no brakes. It attracts participants from across cycling communities, including professionals, bicycle messengers and urban cyclists.
Race results:
1. Neil Bezdek (USA)
Race time: 43.01
Average speed: 26.84 mph
Fastest lap: Bezdek, 2.14, 30 mph average
1st Lap Prime: Bezdek
9th Lap Prime: Bezdek
2. Jon Ander Ortuono (Italy)
3. Alexander Barouh (USA)
Post-race from Neil: “Deeper field this year meant it was harder for a break to go, so the race ended as a sprint among about 30 people. I was second wheel through the last 2 corners, jumped early and held it all the way to the line.”
View the week’s best race recaps of the Red Hook Criterium Milano at these links:
Read more…
On October 15 at 10:30 p.m. the still streets of Bovisa, an industrial district of Milan, Italy will pulse to life with a uniquely New York City-style bicycle race. The Red Hook Criterium Milano, a European off-shoot of the increasingly popular Brooklyn race, fields competitors who ride fixed-gear bikes without brakes for 18 laps around a short, technical course at speeds averaging 26 miles per hour. Like all criterium races, this one requires superior bike handling skills, power and tactics to achieve victory.
In this second edition of the Red Hook Criterium Milano, velojoy.com is pleased to partner with Trimble Racing to sponsor Neil Bezdek, a New York City-grown pro racer and cycling advocate. Bezdek (below), who worked as a New York City bicycle messenger after college and then advanced through the Century Road Club Association ranks to a pro contract, won the Red Hook Criterium in Brooklyn in 2009 and finished second in Milan (2010) and Brooklyn (2011). Read more…
Kattie Fragola, an I-Tri team member, rides the race course of the Maidstone Park Youth Triathlon.
Innovative Program Encourages Empowerment
“There’s nothing you can’t do on a road bike.”
That’s how Abby Roden, 14 (photo below), a participant in an innovative triathlon program for adolescent girls based at Springs Middle School in East Hampton, NY, describes her love of cycling.
I first learned of I-Tri and its motto, “transformation through wellness,” when I came upon a group of Abby’s teammates setting off on a training ride with their coaches. A few weeks later, I watched 15 first-time I-Tri triathletes and 8 mentors race in the second annual Maidstone Park Youth Triathlon. What an inspiring experience! I-Tri is a great example of an effort to help empower young women, at least in part, by getting them involved in cycling.
Led by Abby’s mother, Theresa Roden, the group’s founder and executive director, I-Tri helps adolescent girls develop self-confidence and a sense mastery through triathlon.
Abby Roden in the transition area with the road bicycle that she named Blue Lightening.
Theresa, a former teacher who now works with her husband in publishing, says students are invited to join I-Tri based on recommendations from teachers and guidance counselors and on a survey created by the Women’s Sports Foundation to help identify girls who could benefit from participation.
“We’re looking for girls who don’t identify themselves as athletes, and who also have some self-esteem or emotional issues in their backgrounds,” Theresa says.
Building Camaraderie and Self-Confidence
I-Tri focuses less on finish times than on building self-esteem and camaraderie. Abby, in a gesture of solidarity reflective of the program’s heart, ran across the finish line clasping the hand of her teammate Camila Tucci.
She says she was happy to have improved her running time over last year. But Abby still considers bicycling her favorite triathlon discipline, and even named her LeMond Tourmalet road bicycle Blue Lightening. “I like the speed,” she says. “It’s just you and the bike, and the wind in your hair.”
In Blue Lightening, there’s also an important legacy. Abby’s mother road the bicycle in her own first triathlon in 2006, an experience that paved the way for founding I-Tri.
“I felt transformed, from the inside out,” Theresa Roden told the East Hampton Star of competing in the Block Island Triathlon. “I’d gone from being a couch potato to an athlete. It changed everything…I thought that if I’d begun at the age of 12 rather than 35 what a different life I would have had.”
From left, Paige Rucanno and Valentina Sanchez display their medals following their triathlon finish.
Read more…
It’s not every day that you get to share the road with a top female pro cyclist, but that’s what last Sunday’s autumn ride through the Hudson Highlands delivered. The phenom Evelyn Stevens, 27, just back from the elite women’s time trial world championship in Australia, where she placed sixth, joined in a 35-mile social ride to benefit the New York City advocacy group Transportation Alternatives.
Evelyn Stevens awaits start of time trial. photo: velojoy
I don’t know much about women’s pro cycling, but I love a good story, and Stevens’s grabbed my attention when I first read it in the Wall Street Journal back in 2009. The seemingly impossible tale in brief: a young Wall Street banker buys a bike in 2007, follows a friend’s suggestion to try a Century Road Club Association women’s racing clinic in Central Park, enters a few races for fun, wins and wins, and by 2010 lands a professional contract with what’s considered the best women’s racing team in the world, HTC-Columbia.
A profile in last month’s Bicycling Magazine included this account of one of Stevens’s early come-from-nowhere outings at the 2008 Green Mountain women’s race in Vermont: “Some of the best women riders in the country, on their custom-made machines, had looked up to see a tiny, brown-haired investment banker on a cheap maroon bike, using her granny gear, pass them by.” Read more…
