Bend’s most beloved bike race is returning after a seven-year hiatus.

The Cascade Cycling Classic Downtown Criterium is set for Aug. 10, brought back by the Horner Cycling Foundation, which will also host a Summer Criterium Series at Bend’s Pacific Crest Middle School on Wednesdays from July 3 to July 24.

Bend’s Chris Horner, 52 and one of the most accomplished U.S. road cyclists ever, launched the Horner Cycling Foundation a year ago with his wife Megan Horner and Bend’s Molly Cogswell-Kelley, the former longtime events and financial development director for the Mt. Bachelor Sports Education Foundation (MBSEF).

The mission of the new nonprofit is to “create a junior road cycling team that is inclusive, accessible to all socioeconomic statuses with the focus on skill development, team building and fostering a life-long love of cycling.”

And now the foundation is bringing racing back to the streets of downtown Bend. The downtown criterium was a perennial favorite among local cycling fans, drawing thousands of spectators, but has not been staged since 2017. Part of that is due to the demise of the Cascade Cycling Classic stage race, which ran from 1980 to 2019 on five days in July in Central Oregon. The criterium was just one day of the five of professional road racing, but it was by far the most popular.

The Cascade Cycling Classic, produced by MBSEF, was North America’s longest consecutively running cycling stage race until its hiatus in 2018. It returned in 2019 as a stage race with a criterium in southwest Bend, but has not been held since for a variety of reasons, including lack of sponsorship, the difficulty of closing roads in Bend during the summer, the pandemic, and the increased popularity of gravel racing.

One-day race is more feasible

Producing a scaled-down version of the Cascade Cycling Classic from a five-day stage race to a one-day criterium seemed much more doable to the Horner Cycling Foundation staff, according to Cogswell-Kelley.

Asked if bringing back the criterium was a step toward resurrecting the complete stage race, Cogswell-Kelley was emphatic.

“Nope, nope, hell no,” she said. “If someone wants to do that, they can do that. Putting on a stage race now is just not feasible. You can’t do it in the summer. There were a lot of factors why MSBEF stopped doing it. Our sponsorship ended. We were just making so many people upset, tourists especially, when we were closing access to Cascade Lakes and McKenzie Pass. Bend really blew up, and just having a stage race in July just didn’t make sense anymore.”

Horner’s career included seven Tour de France starts and a victory in the 2013 Spanish Vuelta — as well as a win in the Cascade Cycling Classic Criterium in 2003. Chris and Megan Horner both had years of success racing the criterium in Bend and they made it a priority to bring back the one-day race.

“When I took the job starting the Horner Cycling Foundation, I knew part of my job was to work with the city and get the crit back,” Cogswell-Kelley said. “And so we did. It took a little over a year to get it all approved and find a date that actually worked with the city.”

This year’s race will feature men’s and women’s pros in the evening, as well as master and amateur categories for the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association’s Criterium State Championships earlier in the day. The race is partnering with FootZone to produce a mile running event on the course in between bike races.

In a criterium, riders will race as many laps as they can in the amount of time determined by their category. The downtown criterium begins and ends on Northwest Wall Street. Racers will ride clockwise heading north on Northwest Wall and taking a right onto Northwest Oregon Avenue and then a right onto Northwest Bond Street, a left on Northwest Minnesota Avenue, a right on Northwest Lava Road to Northwest Franklin Street and then back to Wall Street. The lap is approximately .7 of a mile and the streets will be closed to vehicular traffic.

“It will be the old, turny course, what spectators loved,” Cogswell-Kelley said. “It’s going to be really fun.”

Summer crit series and junior program

The foundation started the Bend Summer Criterium Series last year and will bring it back this year starting July 3. Youth, junior and masters riders are welcome.

“Last year it really took off,” Cogswell-Kelley said. “People were excited because it hadn’t happened in a while. We had like 80 racers in one night.”

The Horner Cycling Foundation is also offering a free junior road cycling program on Friday mornings from June 28 to Aug. 23.

“We’re just doing everything we can to try to get juniors excited about getting on a road bike,” Cogswell-Kelley said. “We have a loaner bike program. We have 45 really nice bikes. If a youth rider needs a bike for this season, we can set them up. Hopefully these kids will want to stick with it and enjoy it.”

More details on the Cascade Cycling Classic Criterium can be found at cascadecyclingclassic.com. For more information or to register for the Bend Summer Criterium Series or the junior program, visit hornercyclingfoundation.com or email molly@hornerlawllp.com.