Thylacine, your comments seem a bit myopic... to me it is like saying that a cyclo-cross bike will do on a mountain bike course just fine instead of a mountainbike, or a road bike will do just fine on a track.

Of course "criterium bike" refers to a design philosophy, not an ISO standard or anything of the sort. Of course it's not a "standard"!!! LOL I was talking about a road racing bike optimized for criteriums... you did understand that didn't you? Why are you splitting hairs over a term?

BTW, perhaps in your country, there were mostly road races back in the 80's, I don't recall... but where I live, in Canada, it was mostly just criteriums period. The organizers were hoping this would help the sport gain in popularity with spectators, and help to justify sponsorship, hence only organized criteriums. But we were far behind the US and even farther than Europe before the sport started to get a little sponsorship and more road races. So there actually was an entire decade here - when I was racing - that it was extremely rare to see a real road race... you could count the road race events in a season on one hand - the rest were criteriums. (which was very disappointing to me who excelled on the long distances and hills) And it made sense back then to buy a bike optimized for crits.

And I can tell you, that a bike more designed for criteriums did much better than standard road race bikes which did VERY POORLY in handling on such courses as they still do today as compared to a "criterium design philosophy road race bike" (there is that better now for you?). Like you, many believed a road bike will do just fine... and they all looked like wusses everyting they went around a turn, cowardly putting on the brakes, rather than racing right through them... and that was most of the pack! I could take the whole course leisurely and in every turn move right back to the front and pass the whole pack, because so many had the same point of view as yours.