City CX - the rise and fall of a cyclocross race
Sprinting out of the gate
It’s a cyclocross cliché that the sprint is at the start rather than the end.
In that sense, City CX was typical of the discipline, as on January 13th of this year it burst out of the gate full of verve and energy, announcing itself with this advertising video:
At first it seemed like a slam dunk for an event idea.
Cyclocross racing through Melbourne’s Federation Square in the heart of the CBD, with cash prizes on offer and crowds likely to be plentiful?
Short, intense races that you could do on a gravel bike, road bike or – if you believed the marketing – a Brompton folding bike?
Organised by Bicycle Network, the same team behind Around The Bay In A Day and Peaks Challenge Falls Creek?
What was not to like?
Fast forward two months to April 1st, when Bicycle Network released the following statement, both in an email to participants and displayed on the City CX website:
Photo: Bicycle Network
Despite the date of the release, the event’s cancellation wasn’t an April Fool’s joke, as those who’d entered had their entry fees discreetly refunded over the coming days.
Where did it all go wrong?
Course for concern
While the initial announcement video for City CX was full of flash and polish, a closer look through the details of the event was enough to raise a few eyebrows.
The first was the race course itself. The proposed route started in Federation Square, rode alongside the Yarra river, climbed up a set of stairs and completed an out-and-back loop through a parking garage before emerging back into Fed Square to complete the lap.
The course diagram proposed on the Bicycle Network website. Note that the course seems to show an ascent and descent of a staircase off River Terrace.
Photo: Bicycle Network
All of these features are shown in the advertising video, as well as a couple of shots of riders boosting off obstacles and riding down stairs (at 0:37 and 0:48 in the promotional video respectively) which aren’t allowed in CX racing, but might be interpreted as being indicative of the boisterous nature of the intended event, rather than a true representation of what it would look like on race day.
While cyclocross races sanctioned by the UCI consist of laps of between 2.5-3.5km, the proposed course for City CX only measured in at 1.85km - shorter than usual, but understandable given the limited size of the event space.
Of bigger concern was the format of the event itself.
A race against the clock
A standard cyclocross race will offer participants two chances to ride the course. The first is a non-compulsory morning practice session of around an hour that allows riders to familiarise themselves with the course at their own pace, practice tricky sections and dial in their racing lines. Crucially, this gives riders the chance to strategise the best way for them to tackle the course, including noting potential hazards they may want to avoid.
Given that most cyclocross courses will take an amateur between 6-12 minutes to complete when they’re just practicing, this will mean most riders will be able to complete at least 2-3 laps of the course during the practice session with little trouble.
This then prepares riders for their race later in the day, which depending on a rider’s grade may take between 30-60 minutes to complete - between 3-12 laps when riding at race pace, with the final lap count most commonly falling somewhere between 5 and 9.
With that in mind, we can estimate that an average cyclocross rider competing in a field of between 10-80 riders might complete around 5-10 laps of the course, for an entry fee typically ranging from $20-40 AUD, or around $5-10 per lap. A race organiser will typically run 5-6 races in a race day, with no rider racing more than once.
The revised schedule for race day - note that riders would be allowed to complete up to 5 laps in their morning time trial.
Photo: Bicycle Network
In the case of City CX, event participants would only get to complete four laps of the course - two laps riding alone in the morning time trial (later increased to five) with a rider’s fastest lap time determining seeding, then two laps in groups of 10-15 in the afternoon’s bunch racing. This worked out to $27.25 per lap - though it could be argued that with the later expansion of the morning time trial to five laps it would have been $15.57 per lap instead.
Part of the issue with this is that the short, tight nature of the course and its lack of soft landing surfaces or run-off areas made the large field sizes normally seen in Victorian cyclocross impractical and unsafe. This necessitated that Bicycle Network would have to run a larger number of smaller group races if they wanted all 500 of the event’s maximum possible participants to experience the course on the day without running into darkness.
For the price of a $109 early bird ticket (and more if you waited until closer to race day to sign up), riding four laps of the City CX course didn’t seem to offer great value for cyclocross and gravel riders - even with lunch, a free drink and a buff thrown in.
Obviously much of the cost per rider would have gone towards rider insurance and hiring Federation Square as an event venue, but even with such an iconic venue as a race course a lot of potential participants found the value proposition lacking.
If you were looking for extra value, there were some options available, with nearby spin studio Cycle Collective offering an eight-week training program for City CX participants, and local cyclocross riding group Let’s Talk About CX[i] offering open invites to their weekly trail rides and CX skills sessions. However, it could be argued that neither of these suddenly made City CX a bargain - the Cycle Collective program would still cost participants $189 each on top of their entry fee, while the trail rides and skills sessions offered by Let’s Talk About CX were and are open to all riders, meaning those wanting to hone their skills could do so for free without needing to sign up for City CX.
Equal play for equal pay
The third concerning factor with City CX was prize money. At the time the event was initially announced, there were three major cash prizes of $1000, $500, and $250, to be awarded to the first three finishers in the final of the group races - the racers who’d recorded the fastest times in the morning’s time trial stage.
Given the likelihood that male A Grade or semi-pro riders would be lured to the event by the prize money on offer (after all, who wouldn’t want to win $1000 for a 10 minute race?), it seemed unlikely that any of the originally advertised prize money would find its way to female participants – highly unusual in Australian cyclocross, where equal prize money has long established as the norm rather than the exception.
It certainly seemed out of character for Bicycle Network, an organisation that has several steps to increase women’s participation in cycling, especially at Peaks Challenge Falls Creek (a 235km road gran fondo), where female participants are offered women’s-only training rides and a pre-event women’s information session as part of their entry fee.
This approach to prize money was eventually changed after feedback from community groups (including Melburn Durt, a riding collective made up of women, trans men and gender non-conforming folks), with the prize money now split between two gender pools– with the 3 highest seeded finishers of each gender now set to receive $500, $300 and $200 respectively. Additionally, cash prizes of $50 were offered for the winner of each non-championship group race, to further encourage riders to sign up.
Bicycle Network did offer women who signed up during the week following International Women’s Day an offer code for a 50% discount on their entries. It was a welcome gesture to be sure, and likely increased the number of women who would have participated had the event gone ahead, but with the organisers three weeks away from cancelling the event due to ‘the demand not being there’, it seems that City CX was already struggling for participants by the time that discount was advertised.
The announcement of a 50% discount for women who signed up in the wake of International Women’s Day was certainly welcome, but may have come too late .
Photo: Bicycle Network
The wisdom of the crowd
The last concerning factor was how much of a surprise the event was - although dropping a huge surprise is great for building buzz and hype (just ask Beyoncé or Taylor Swift), even after the event was announced there didn’t seem to be anyone in the CX community with any prior knowledge of it.
The current cohort of cyclocross race organisers in Australia – heck, even in Victoria – comprise a series of individuals who have organised state, national and international level cyclocross events, and it’s hard to imagine that none of them would have wanted to help capitalise on such a rare and remarkable opportunity for the sport.
Now it’s not to say that it’s impossible to run a CX event without consulting those who had done it before - and Bicycle Network is certainly capable of running quality events - more that had Bicycle Network reached out to riders and race organisers within the CX community beforehand[ii], they would likely have found many willing helpers.
An opportunity lost
Although City CX will likely fade from view, and seems unlikely to be attempted again, I must admit I’m saddened to see it go. It looked to be a chance for cyclocross to grab the public’s attention in a way not seen before in Australia or New Zealand, and to potentially reach a huge new audience for the first time.
It certainly wasn’t without its flaws - as listed above - and likely couldn’t justify its asking price, but it’s likely to remain a ‘What if?’ moment in the history of Aussie cyclocross.
Photo: Bicycle Network
[i] The author is a member of the Let’s Talk About CX organising committee, and upon hearing of City CX approached Bicycle Network about the possibility of forming a mutually beneficial relationship between the two organisations. This resulted in the two organisations promoting each other on their websites and social media (which you can see here), though no money ever changed hands.
[ii] The author posed a list of questions to Bicycle Network’s public contact page in the wake of the event’s cancellation, one of which touched upon the level of community consultation undertaken before the event’s announcement. As of the time of publication (May 8th, the date City CX was meant to take place) there hasn’t been a response.