Race Organizers 2025 Royal Bay Crit Report

This year featured a bit of a cooler and windy day, and 28 riders were out to race one of BC’s more unique criterium courses, including a few from Vancouver! As a little background, July dates were attempted, but other events nearby made that impossible. August 3rd was selected with the goal of a double-header of crits, with Windsor Park having been listed on August 3rd, but the day after we set the date, Windsor was moved to July 27th. 🤦‍♂️ I was also formulating an ‘Island Criterium Championships’ idea to tie the events together, but the VCL wasn’t interested (neither including this as a VCL event, or the Island Champs idea).

The day began with a quick Learn To intro clinic with six racers. I haven’t seen anyone else offering any kind of Learn To session on a closed course, so it was a very unique opportunity. (Riddle me this: how does anyone in this city/island/province actually get to learn some crit basics this safely?) Case in point: at the aforementioned Windsor Park, doing some warm-up laps, met a new rider who’d only done a few Tripleshot rides, and this B race was to be his first race! I gave him some quick tips, but the current ‘system’ is not at all beginner-friendly, especially for guys. One of my goals would be to try and improve on that.

Our first race was next, and featured a small C group, who stuck together until the final laps. Gabrielle took the W ahead of Daiya and newcomer Rose, and the indominable Jimmy Holtz relied on his wile to keep ahead of our youngest rider Cael.

The B group was largest, with 11 guys and 3 A women. Keith, our returning B champ, was off from the top, soloing away! I foolishly bridged up and mostly sat on for several laps until we were caught during a prime. We also had a couple women’s only primes which spiced things up. Keith sustained another solo run to the finish, and 17 seconds behind Chad won the bunch sprint just edging out Kimberly. Dan was our 3rd guy, and Mirtha and Abigail completed our women’s podium.

It was a similar situation in the A’s, Cooper was our returning champ, and he solo’d away early on, holding the chasing pack at bay the entire time! On quick scan he had as much as 60 seconds on the field (and laps were in the 100sec range, he might have been able to see the field ahead of him!!) Aiden Oliphant won the bunch sprint ahead of Carson Smith and Evan Russell!

Thanks to all the racers who made it out to this unique course.

I’m trying my best to make cool things happen..fun factor was exceptionally high for the day, but definitely some unexpected challenges from where I wasn’t expecting leading into it, and in all honesty the financial factor not-so-great. Definitely will have to plan differently in the future, perhaps will have to run it ‘Go Fund Me’ style to ensure there’s interest and enough capital to cover the event. I believe the course still has lots of potential down the road, and have other course ideas I’d like to try.

A huge thank you again to those who made the effort to be a part of this. 🥰

-> 2025 Results: https://www.webscorer.com/race?raceid=399878

GRATITUDE

So many helped make this happen! First up, thank you to our event sponsor (and bike fitter) Dockside Physiotherapy, and Cycles West who were our supporting CyclingBC Team. Along with Cycles West, Goldstream Bicycles and Westshore Bikes also contributed to complete our $700 value prize & prime pool! And the City of Colwood and Royal Bay neighbourhood were very kind to host us once again. And it wouldn’t be a proper bike race without Patrick from Rebel Timing proving prompt and accurate results.

A number of volunteers also were critical, especially Chad Grice, Gabrielle Leung, Dan Struthers and Mark Haughey, helping with the lead-up to the event. They were there the day of as well, playing important roles, as well as Dave Bitschy, Roland Rabien, Bruce Tonkin, Kevin Chen, Caeleigh Marshall and Adam Lawrence who were our course marshals.

Thank you all so much for helping make cool things happen!!!!