My opinion on this subject is more or less in alignment with Thylacines’s; regular road bike geometry is fine for crits. If one wanted to get cute, you could label a bike as having “criterium geometry” after you steepened the head and seat angles by 1 degree and limited the BB drop to 6.5 cm or so. Do we need to have a new frame type classification brought on by splitting hairs?

Eddy Merckx used to sell frames with two different geometry’s: Century geometry, and Corsa geometry. The Corsa geometry is what is being called “criterium geometry” in this thread. Merckx dropped the Corsa line presumably because the Century geometry frames got the job done and were more popular overall.

And speaking of riding in crits, who said a bike that steers fast is beneficial? I’ve been taken out by boneheads that couldn't hold a straight line in the pack. Put everyone on fast steering bikes with low trail and you could have pileups all over the place. No thanks.