Are there specific bikes designed for criterium style racing? Last year I was doing some local crits and a guy on my team was saying his bike was a crit "specific" bike, but as far as I know there isn't such a thing. I didn't want to start a debate so i just let it go especially because I am not 100% educated in this area. I know that a few other people I've talked to didn't like doing crit's with there expensive race bikes because they were worried about ruining there nice bikes in a crash but yet they used them in road races.

I'd just like to hear form some people who are more educated in this area to confirm my suspicions or to educate me in this area.

Thanks!!

Edit:
Also the guy I'm refering to only had 1 road bike and it was a nice carbon Fuji of some sort that he claimed to be specific to crits.

:

As far as I know, no.

If you're doing a crit, you may want a bike that is a little more on the responsive side, just because you might have a lot of turns. However, we're not talking about a track bike. We're talking about bikes that fall well within standard road geometries.

Now, a specific rider may have a bike that he or she uses mainly for crits, and use another bike for training. And who knows, in this age of hyper-specialization and increasing road bike sales, it's far from inconceivable that a manufacturer will start billing crit-specific bikes. But I for one don't see why you need anything too specific for a crit.

Bacciagalupe, thanks for your response. I think you pretty much summed up what I think too. Thanks.

Headtube length, stack and reach are the big ones and wheelbase might be a stretch. That being said if it don't fit you don't go fast.

Crit bike criteria:
1) does it fit

If both crit bikes fit than I would go for either the cheaper one or look into my first sentence for more nuances.

thechemist: My bike is fine for crits, road races and I've even done quite a few triathlons on it including an 70.3. My bike fits me well. I was just curious if bike companies actually make bikes or market bikes to criterium racers like my teammate told me. I pretty much understand that any bike can do a crit as long as it fits well but didn't know if there were specific bikes designed for crits.

I used to own a cannondale "criterium" 3.0. Steep angles and wicked stiff. I literally had to put a pad on the saddle when I first bought it. twas my first real road bike.

on the other hand I read an article about some guy in south africa winning a Crit (dont know what cat, but he claims he was against dudes rollin on zipps and whatnot.) on his dual suspension MTB that he had locked out, knobby tires and all.

My apologies, check out blue bikes.
https://www.rideblue.com/company.php

If I recall back in the day 80's crit bike had steeper angles and shorter wheel base twitchy quick bikes higher BB but I may be wrong I road C-dales and Kliens both fast bikes not for long hauls.......

No, not really. But some bikes are better suited to crits than others. I think my Cervelo Soloist is a very good crit bike. It has a short wheel base and is very quick steering. (Some might call it twitchy.) It is very stiff so if feels like it accelerates without wasted energy, but it's not the most comfortable bike on long rides over bad pavement. It has a short head tube, so I have a fair amount of bar drop which makes it easy to get into a low, aerodynamic position.

Having it a little taller at the BB can be a good thing for guys pushing longer cranks.

Cannondale made their frames with slightly different geometry and marketed them as either criterium or road designs. The criterium had a shorter wheelbase and a bit higher bottom bracket for pedaling through tight corners. But it certainly didn't preclude the bike from being used for other purposes. I used mine for numerous bike tours with full camping equipment in panniers on a rear rack - and it never came near a crit.

As others are saying, crit bikes don't have radically different geometry, but if you owned multiple bikes you could set one up in a more aggressive position (that you couldn't sustain for a long ride) and call it a crit bike.

To my knowledge nobody in the US, continental Europe, or Japan has made a "criterium bike" since the mid-1970s. I'm not even sure if there was ever any agreement on what constituted a "crit bike." Certainly, many frames were labeled or marketed as such, but few showed all the features--high bottom bracket, steep angles, and short fork rake--on the same bike. For example, Raleigh Pros had very high bottom brackets but pretty standard angles and fork rakes. My Charles Roberts frames had moderate bottom bracket drop, slightly short fork rakes, and standard 73-degree angles. My '79 Gios was clearly an Italian frame made for export to the US--it had a low bottom bracket per the CONI manual, a standard fork rake, but angles on the steep side of conventional. It was definitely not the same model Roger DeVlaeminck was winning the spring classics on.

I remember a few--a buddy's custom Tanguay that looked like a track bike with road dropouts, another friend's Marinoni with a suspiciously high bottom bracket, and a showroom full of frames that Ben Serotta made before he started equipping the 7-Eleven team with his interpretation of a standard Italian road bike. "Crit bikes" went out of fashion when duffers like me noticed that the guys winning criteriums were doing it on standard road bikes.

Nowadays, below the top tube, road bikes are pretty much based on the standard road racing bike of the late 70s, sized down a centimeter or two--71.5-74 degree head angles, 65-70 mm bottom bracket drop, and 43-45 cm fork offset.

See post #12 in this thread. Cannondale made frames with criterium-specific geometry into the 90s. Steep angles and a short wheelbase.

Criterium bike :

BB shell tiny higher than normal
STA generally is the same than in a road bike.
HTA tend to be steep to help handling.
Shorter wheelbase.
Generally aluminum fits better than carbon, some guys sure still do criterium in steel bikes.
Pretty much that's it.

Crit bikes that I have seen tend to be coveted for their stiffness and handling. A lot of local guys have Caads as crit bikes because they are stiff and respond well to the power transfers you get in crits.

The C'dale also had a higher bottom bracket to allow to pedal through corners with more lean. I think that was the major standout of it being called Criterium. I still have my Criterium framed bike, and its very stiff

A good crit bike is one you won't mind crashing and be too worried about when it get's thrown in the back of somebodies pickup while you're getting hauled away in an ambulance. (Just joking... a little.)

As mentioned steeper angles can help a bit with responsiveness. My Spooky Skeletor has a steeper STA and HTA than my Van Dessel. I could race both, but the Spooky has some special cornering characteristics that I feel help in the local crits. However, a competent rider could race any road bike in a crit.

Here's my crit bike:


but in reality, any bike is a good crit bike.
My avatar shows my first crit bike.

My Stowe "criterium":



Has black tires now. Tough to tell in that angle, but the tire is CLOSE to the DT- if the wire for the cadence sensor is at all slack, it hits the tire.

Davis Phinney had Ben Serotta build his bikes with "crit geometry" when he started racing with 7-Eleven. After their first foray into Europe in '85 they realized that it wouldn't cut it for multi-day tours (and harassment from the peloton) and by '86 they were on a laid back, Euro set-up.

theres only one criterium
https://www.masibikes.com/bikes/steel...criterium-2013

Anything you are willing to crash...