Another thing to remember is that outside of a few hotbeds of racing the participation and fields were much smaller than they are today. The entry level races I did in 1981 only had fields of 15-20, sometimes less if the weather wasn't great. The next level up, which was roughly equivalent to todays cat5 ran with a still smaller field, seldom being over 15 people. And I don't recall anyone using a specific criterium bike. I think many of the racers were older, with decent careers, as some of them had very expensive bikes Like an early Klein. Even then, all the bikes were just nice production bikes, and many of them like my Motobecane grand sprint were not even top tier bikes.
So outside of places like NJ where there was a strong local support to get people into racing you likely wouldn't see many custom built bikes in the first place.
Steve Birmingham Lowell, Massachusetts USA
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:35:15 -0500 From: "Bill Talbot" <bulldogsrule@graffiti.net> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: [CR]Re; The Crit Bike Message-ID: <20081016003515.D6991148A6@ws5-9.us4.outblaze.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" MIME-Version: 1.0 Precedence: list Message: 14
In many areas crit racing was pretty much all that was available in the 80' s. As a result I believe some of the "standard" US built highend framesets had many "crit" features as their "normal" race build. Tubesets, geometry, clearances and fit were picked with that end in mind.
Have a look at a good example of this with my 1985 Schwinn Paramount PDG St andard bike. You will be had pressed to find a beefier and fairly tight (fo r the year) rear triangle. Also the Columbus SP tubeset and fork make for a responsive ride. Kevin Kruger, what say you about your Para? His is a "Team Icy Hot" version from '86. Alan McCormick seemed to do O.K. on it!
Link here for pics
http://www.wooljersey.com/
http://www.wooljersey.com/
Bill Talbot
New Hartford, CT USA