A Guide to Cyclo-Cross
So, mountain bikers, think you were the first to ride a bicycle off road? Think again, cyclo-crossers have been at it for at least a hundred years, way before anyone though about sticking some fat tyres on a clunky bike in the 1970s.
Cycle-crossers will tell you that historically it was a way of keeping fit in the winter. When the road racing season finished, why not maintain your fitness by riding round a muddy field on a Sunday morning? This does seem to have some link to the way cyclo-cross came about in the early 20th century; French road racers in particular are said to have raced each other from town to town in the off-season by the quickest possible route – cutting across fields and through woods, heading for the church’s steeple in the distance. This may also have given us the term ‘steeple chase’ as it was almost certainly the riders only point of reference.
The increased difficulty of controlling a road bike off road also helped riders improve their bike handling and the need to jump off and carry it over obstacles (logs, streams, etc) helped with their all round fitness.
The Origins of Cyclo-Cross Racing
The first properly organised cyclo-cross race appears to have been the French National
Early cyclo-cross
Championship in 1902. The organisers were Daniel Gousseau and Géo Lefèvre (Lefèvre was also the man behind the Tour de France).
The sport received a huge boost in 1910 when Tour de France winner Octave Lapize mentioned his off-season cyclo-cross when explaining how he maintained is fitness. Subsequently National Championships were held in Belgium (1910), Switzerland (1912), Luxembourg (1923), Spain (1929) and Italy in (1930). The first international cyclo-cros event was held in Paris in 1924.
It remained in Europe for the following decades until the 1970s when the organised races began to become popular in the United States; the first National Championship was held in California in 1975.
The Nature of Cyclo-Cross Racing
Although cyclo-cross is still regarded as a method of winter training by many riders, the scene has been big enough for so many years that some riders are cyclo-cross specialists, rarely racing in any other disciplines.
There are of course similarities with mountain bike racing but there are also significant differences. Races tend to be shorter and run on courses with smaller laps. Most races will not be more than one hour long and the format will be something like 50 minutes racing plus one lap – when the leader completes the race, everyone else finishes on that lap, whether they’ve been lapped or not.
Courses are set so that getting off at several points is unavoidable- big logs tend to be the main obstacles – and competent cyclo-cross riders are adept at dismounting and remounting in one smooth motion. Bikes can be swapped while racing as long as you have a willing helper to hold the spare one.
The days of just adding some knobbly tyres to your road bike are also long gone. Dedicated cyclo-cross bikes have been available for many years now and feature better clearance between the wheels and the frame (to avoid mud clogging) and stronger brakes. Check out this Grand Prix start to a 1950 race: