PicoBlog

Back when cyclocross was cool for like two years in the early-2010s, the #crossiscoming hashtag became a thing that everyone did. And like any popular thing in America, people then quickly turned on it and turned it into an object of ridicule.

I feel like with ‘cross returning to its niche roots, it is now acceptable to ironically use the #crossiscoming hashtag once again. It’s the circle of life. One of the reasons the hashtag became passe is it was quickly subject to seasonal creep. #crossiscoming in August quickly became #crossiscoming in June, and seriously, I think we can agree, yeah, no.

Despite the hashtag’s wayward history, I think it is proper to come up with a way of turning the calendar from the summer months of road racing, grvl, and mountain biking to the only legitimate season on the cycling calendar, cyclocross.

The turn of the season is not as much a date as it is a mindset. It’s gluing tubulars. It’s going to August ‘cross practices and complaining because it’s too hot. It’s planning to be busy every Saturday and Sunday from September through early December. And maybe it’s about hoping the Bulletin gets its stuff together and starts posting content again.

Last year when I moved back home to Chicago, one of the side benefits was a gift-wrapped event to mark the end of the summer and the turning of the page to ‘cross season: the 10-day Intelligentsia Cup criterium series.

I had heard of Intelli prior to moving back home, but I had never attended one of the races. Since I had a sweet new G Master II 70-200mm lens and I was living back in Chicago last summer, it only made sense to check out some of the races.

I was absolutely blown away by how cool the races were. Not only were the fields big and the racing great, each of the 10 nights was an Event for the local community. I went to 5 of the 10 races in 2022 and knew I would be back for more in 2023.

New for this year were actual media passes, which meant that I was that much closer to being a proper critographer. Since I told race organizers that I was covering the event for the Bulletin, I feel obligated to write a little bit about what I think is one of the best things going in American bike racing and share some of my critography from the races I attended this year.

While crit racing does not necessarily fit the vibe off-road vibe of the Bulletin, I will stan for crit racing every day of the week. I came to really love crits while doing critography at the Machinery Hill crits when I lived in Minneapolis, and now that I live in Chicago, the end-of-July Intelligentsia Cup series has already become a highlight of the summer for me.

Crits are a truly American form of bike racing, and I think we should celebrate that. The speed, the strategy, the breakaways, the attitude, I think it’s all great and worth getting excited about.

The Intelligentsia Cup is a 10-race series of criterium races spread across the Chicagoland area from Friday through the following Sunday. The series was first held with a single race in 2012, and it celebrated its 11th edition in 2023. The series draws riders from across the U.S. and the world at both the Elite and amateur levels because it a. Exists and b. Rules.

The biggest reason I think American bike racing should embrace criteriums and celebrate them is that done right, they are the best way to expose non-bike people to the sport and generate crowds that make races feel like proper events.

The Intelligentsia Cup races are held at venues that are properly part of the communities and not off in the proverbial office park hellscape. Winfield, Mundelein, Lombard, Northbrook, and Lake Bluff are all Metra commuter rail communities, and the courses for those races are all set near the Metra stations and their accompanying development.

In addition to being my home town—well, I technically grew up in Sleepy Hollow, but our post office was in West Dundee—West Dundee is a river town with a growing downtown area adjacent to the course. Glen Ellyn is set in Richville, USA, but the residents use the road closures to throw block parties. And the series finale on Fulton Street is set in a growing brewery district with three different breweries along the course.

It is hard to overstate how awesome the crowds were at some of the events. Lombard has a legit downtown area and there had to be hundreds if not a thousand people watching along the course and at a number of bars and restaurants along the course. And then the crowd at the series finale on Fulton Street was absolutely bonkers. Both events had the energy of the Waterloo World Cup, and it absolutely ruled.

Like any proper series, the Intelligentsia Cup has an overall omnium and a yellow jersey for the series leader. I know yellow is synonymous with a certain other race, but I do have to say that for critographers, the yellow jersey provides an irresistible focal point.

I would, however, be ok with a re-brand to the Chicago flag because let’s be honest, the Chicago flag rules.

If I am being honest, one of the challenges American crit racing faces is that L39ion has a shitton of money, and everyone else doesn’t, and when you can afford the depth of talent the team can, it can make the racing super predictable.

The Women’s team does not have the depth of the Men’s in terms of numbers, but it does have probably four of the top five women racing crits right now in the Schneider sisters Skyler and Samantha and the Ryan sisters Alexis and Kendall. 2022 winner Marlies Mejias Garcia was back this year, but with L39ion racing the whole series in 2023, the overall yellow was theirs to lose.

L39ion swept the podium on the opening night in West Dundee and then continued to win with Samantha Schneider wrapping up the series overall with a win on Fulton Street last Sunday. 2017 and 2019 Australian Cyclocross National Champion Peta Mullens made her return to American crit racing and finished 2nd, and Kendall Ryan took 3rd in the overall.

The L39ion men appeared on track for a dominant series after Robin Carpenter won the hilltop sprint at West Dundee, but then Ben Oliver of the MitoQ New Zealand Cycling Project started rolling after his win in a torrential downpour at the race’s second stop at Lake Ellyn. Oliver won at Mundelein and Lombard, and then rode the yellow to the series win.

L39ion not winning aside—look, they are the Yankees, Alabama football, and Duke Basketball rolled into one—it was cool to see the camaraderie and excitement from the Kiwis throughout their week of success.

The 2023 Intelligentsia Cup actually started a day early for me this year. Perhaps the biggest highlight of doing critography for Intelli is that for the past however many years, Official Bulletin Euro Correspondent Ethan Glading has been the Official Intelligentsia Cup Photography Correspondent. Glading picked up the gig while living in the Chicago suburb of Geneva, and despite now living in Paris, he apparently can’t stay away despite swearing he has taken every possible photo at the race venues.

I was able to meet up with Glading the night before the series opener and seeing his photos from each race was a total clinic on how to be a better photographer.

Since it’s only proper to give Ethan a bit of a hard time, the race adopted the tagline “Big Crit Energy,” which was emblazoned across the rather flashy official race shirts. By the end of night one, Ethan told me, “Do not say that in my presence again.”

Fair. But anyway, here’s Ethan and his Big Crit Energy.

The opening race at West Dundee has already become a special one for me. It’s in my de facto hometown, and my parents both came out to watch the races. And that Friday, Morleigh and Nathan from SnowyMountain Photography were in attendance, so it was like a legit Cyclocross Media Pit reunion, which totally ruled.

The West Dundee course is probably the most challenging of the 10 Intelligentsia Cup courses. The focal point of the course is a steep hill called “Leg-Breaker Hill.”

You may have heard that what goes up, must come down, so there is also a downhill rip into a sharp right-hand turn.

Now those of you from Chicago might be saying, “Chicago? Hills? No way.” Well, West Dundee is situated in the valley of the Fox River, which has some steep hills outside its floodplain. The hills are nothing to get excited about, but they are still hills.

One of the coolest parts of this race for me was hanging out near the crazy fast downhill and hearing citizen fans oohing and ahhing about just how fast the fields were ripping down the hill. I don’t know if there’s a way to translate these feelings of excitement into fandom or whatever, but it’s still cool to see folks throw a little respect on the skill and excitement of bike racing.

I have seen hard cyclocross courses and even hard crit courses, but I don’t know if I have seen a course absolutely obliterate a field like the West Dundee course did. In both the Elite Women's and Elite Men’s races, maybe 40-50% of each field finished the race.

I was chatting with Wisconsinite Michael Lambert—who doubles as a legit ‘cross racer—who finished with the field in the Elite Men’s race, and I was like, “Dude. Just, dude. Fk yeah.” That’s how hard of a race it was.

Maybe next year I should jump into the Cat 4 race and get shelled like everyone else.

Here are a few more from West Dundee:

Stop 2 for the series is probably the most picturesque venue around Lake Ellyn in the western suburb of Glen Ellyn. And I guess it better be picturesque since a quick perusal of Zillow reveals home prices of $2.1, $1.8, and $1.0 million for houses currently on sale within shouting distance of the course.

To be fair to the rich denizens of the Lake Ellyn neighborhood, my new favorite thing ever is the block-party, mid-lap prime. Seriously, the revelers just throw a line down on the pavement, collect a bunch of money, and give it away to the riders. I definitely support this kind of thing at pretty much every race ever.

The story of the race at Lake Ellyn was the rain. Looking at the radar on that Saturday morning, it was pretty much guaranteed to rain, and I was really on the fence about heading toward the Western Suburbs. I was nominally shooting finish photos for Rob at Criterium Nation, but I didn’t have to go to the race. I missed out on Curtis White Day at Charm City, but I was at the rainy Day 2 of Rochester that was not the most fun to photograph.

In the end, I am glad I threw a gallon freezer bag around my camera and stuck around.

The rain started midway through the Elite Women’s race and provided a nice backdrop for Skyler Schneider’s mid-race solo attack off the front. If the light is going to be drab and gray, might as well have some quality rain to make the rain images look a bit more epic.

The Elite Men’s race featured a 10-man break that formed right away thanks to the slippery chicanes in Turns 1 and 2. Riders going through the section looked like racers on the ice course of Super Mario Kart, and after the race, I overheard Robin Carpenter telling someone it was “the worst pavement I’ve ever raced on.” Even walking across with, you know, shoes on, it felt slicker than the standard pavement.

The highlight of the Men’s race was perhaps the greatest Instagram comment I have ever received.

Rounding out Lake Ellyn, here are a few more shots:

Stop 3 for me was the mid-week race in Lombard, another Metra community with a course immediately adjacent to the train station. You better believe a Metra train shot was a must for the Lombard Photographer’s Bingo.

Ethan had talked the Lombard race up, and it did not disappoint. But the real motivation for me was that my coworker Corey, his wife Chelsea, and his daughter were participating in the community fun race. He couldn’t make it last year, but when he told me he was for sure going this year, not even rush hour traffic was going to keep me from checking it out.

Corey and his daughter crushed the family fun race, obviously, and he even took the chance to check the damage from a big move he put on a couple of kids.

Next step, racing crits with the trailer attached.

The races of lesser importance, the Elite races, were an international affair of the Australasia kind. Peta Mullens of Australia won the Elite Women’s race, and Kiwi star Ben Oliver won the Elite Men’s sprint.

My favorite moment of the Lombard race was an impromptu reactivation of the Jingle Cross Musco Lighting Friday Night Bokeh Challenge.

If you are not familiar with Media Pit lore, there was a section through one of the barns that had Christmas lights, and every photographer was obligated to get their best bokeh photo. Bill would always win, but we’d still try to “compete.”

There were some lights strung outside the final turn of the rectangular course and Ethan and I both got there at roughly the same time with the exact same idea. I’ll leave it to you to decide that Ethan bokeh’d better.

Wrapping up Lombard:

The biggest bummer of the week was my other de facto home race in Elgin on Friday of the final weekend of Intelli (I lived there until age 12 and went to high school there). As the day progressed, the radar was showing huge thunderstorms scheduled to hit around 6 pm. I figured the races would still go, so I drove by on my way home from work, but when I got there, everyone was headed the other way.

The organizers decided to cancel the races, which was probably the right decision, but of course, it didn’t actually start raining until like 9 pm. At least I got to have dinner with my parents.

Sunday’s series finale was in my current hometown of Chicago in the Chicago Brewing District of the Kinzie Industrial Corridor. Yeah, IDK what it’s actually called. It’s on Fulton Street, but it’s not the Fulton Market. The Chicago Brewing District seems kind of generic, name-wise.

Anyway, the race absolutely ruled. With the Goose Island tap room right next to the finish line, the crowds for the race were absolutely massive. It honestly felt like being at an actual event. That people attend. With cheering. And energy.

Seriously, can’t overstate how awesome this event was. Need to hold more bike races within easy access of literally millions of people.

The absolute must for this one was the Photographer’s Bingo shot with the Sears Tower in the background. Like failure in Apollo 13, not getting Photographer’s Bingo shots is not an option, so of course I got something.

Funny story about the Sears Tower: For like, ever, the Sears Tower was the Sears Tower and everyone who grew up in the Chicagoland area calls it that. But then in 2009, the Willis Group bought the naming rights and renamed it the Willis Tower. Literally no one ever calls it the Willis Tower except SnowyMountain Nathan because he literally works for Willis Towers Watson. Can’t make this stuff up.

Before we get to the best part of the Fulton race, let’s give the Elites a bit more love.

One of the coolest aspects of the Fulton Street race is the series finale is not the Elite Men’s race, it is the Men’s novice race. There are call-ups from race announcer Brad Sohner, and he announces the race like it is the biggest event of the weekend.

The highlight of the week for me was seeing two dudes I know, Robbie and Matt, jumping into their first-ever criteriums. When Robbie said that he’d be racing for the first time ever, I figured the least I could do is provide some recent photography to commemorate the occasion for him.

I have interviewed Marianne Vos, I’ve photographed Worlds, I’ve gotten to shoot Badger Volleyball matches, I’ve been to six Cyclocross Nationals, but IDK, getting to be a part of stuff like this is just extra special for me.

Despite one of them perhaps crashing, both came out of the experience stoked on crit racing and exciting to race in 2024. Hopefully a winter on Zwift won’t detail their excitement, and they’ll be back for races two and beyond in 2024.

So that’s it. That’s Intelli 2023 for me. I was hoping to make five or six races, but the four I went to all ruled. This series is an absolute banger and if you are into crits *cough cough Boedi* you should absolutely make it part of your schedule in 2024.

And in conclusion, #crossiscoming.

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