USA Cycling will sanctioned the October 15 Red Bull Last Stand, a fixed-gear criterium event held at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas.
The event marks the federation’s first foray into fixed-gear road racing, which has gained attention in recent years due to the success of Brooklyn’s Red Hook Criterium and Los Angeles’s Wolfpack Hustle events.
Up to this point, the fixed-gear road scene has evolved without any involvement by the national federation.
“We don’t want to turn away any events that want to work with us,” said Joan Hanscom, USA Cycling’s director of event services. “We’ll work with these events if we think they are safe.”
The sanctioning means the October 15 Red Bull Last Stand will have officials provided by USA Cycling, and will also be covered by USA Cycling’s liability insurance.
USA Cycling’s rulebook on road events includes a clause allowing for the inclusion of “track events on the road,” however prior to 2016 the federation had never worked with an event. Hanscom said USA Cycling asked Red Bull promoter Ravi Rajcoomar to send the race plans to the federation’s technical director Chuck Hodge, who gave the final OK to sanction the event.
A veteran of the domestic road cycling scene, Rajcoomar helped launch the USA Crits series and organized the San Francisco Grand Prix, among other events. Rajcoomar said he reached out to USA Cycling for the Red Bull event to see whether the national federation had changed its longtime stance against sanctioning nontraditional road cycling events.
“This is an opportunity to work with a premium brand in sports and to do something different in cycling,” Rajcoomar said. “To their credit, they were open-minded about it.”
Rajcoomar said he developed the Red Bull Last Stand as a way to bring the worldwide beverage brand back into traditional road cycling. Red Bull sponsors the popular Red Bull Rampage mountain bike event, as well as the Red Bull Road Rage, a downhill road race. This is the brand’s first criterium race, Rajcoomar said.
The race spins laps around the iconic Alamo in downtown San Antonio. Similar to the Red Hook Criterium races, the Last Stand will be held at night.
The men’s races feature a 50-lap eliminator format, where the final rider across the line is eliminated each lap. The women’s races will complete 30 laps around course. In addition to the fixed-gear races, the event will feature men and women’s eliminator criteriums for riders on traditional geared bikes as well. Each race features a $5,000 purse.
Rajcoomar said Red Bull has agreed to sponsor the race for at least three years.
“We thought the [eliminator] format was an easy format for fans to understand,” Rajcoomar said. “It’s the battle at the Alamo, you know, everybody gets it.”
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