Tyler Williams said he raced a bit more aggressively than he had planned, but an energetic crowd can do that to cyclists.

Williams, 29 and of Santa Rosa, California, took the lead on the final corner then held on to win the pro men’s race of the Cascade Cycling Classic Downtown Criterium in Bend on Saturday night.

“It was a really fun course, really flowy and fast and pretty dynamic,” Williams said. “It was a really great atmosphere. It was as big an atmosphere as any crit in America, top-notch.”

Hundreds of excited spectators lined the streets to watch the first downtown criterium in Bend in seven years. Top junior and masters racers competed throughout the afternoon, then the event concluded with the pro men’s and women’s races in the evening.

The pro fields were significantly smaller than previous downtown criteriums that were part of the multistage Cascade Cycling Classic, held from 1980 to 2019, but that did little to quell the energy of the spectators.

Ryan Gorman, of Orinda, California, finished second in the pro men’s race, and Alex Akins, of Monterey, California, took third.

In a criterium, riders race as many laps as they can in the amount of time determined by their category. The pro women raced for 50 minutes, and the pro men for 75 minutes. The downtown criterium started and finished on NW Wall Street, and included Oregon Avenue, Bond Street, Minnesota Avenue, Lava Road and Franklin Street. The lap was approximately 0.7 of a mile.

Williams said he had raced in the Cascade Cycling Classic in 2012 and 2014, and he competed in Road Cycling Nationals when they were staged in Bend in 2010.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been up here, but it’s good to be back for sure,” Williams said. “If you ask anyone in the U.S.A., this is one of their favorite places to come. It’s really nice to have a nice night here. I’d love for it to go back to being a stage race at some point, but this was a super awesome event, for sure.”

Alexandrine Obrand, 26 and of Palo Alto, California, won the pro women’s race, staged just before the men’s race on Saturday night. The race included just 17 riders, but lots of strong attacks, and the field quickly split into two.

“We were all sizing each other up,” Obrand said. “It dwindled pretty quick. I knew Laurel (Rathbun) was super strong, so we were kind of working each other. I hopped on Laurel’s wheel and got around her at the line.”

Rathbun, of Encinitas, California, finished second, and Katja Verkerk, of Victoria, British Columbia, claimed third.

“The four-corner course is really fun,” Obrand said. “The crowd was amazing right from Lap 1. Everyone loves a downtown crit, and this is one of the best ones I’ve been to.”

Obrand — originally from Montreal but now living in Palo Alto — attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a mechanical engineer for Apple. She made the eight-hour drive to Bend with friends.

“It was worth it,” Obrand said. “I had never been to Bend before, but the people I came with had and they love it.”

The downtown criterium was resurrected by the Horner Cycling Foundation, founded a year ago by Bend’s Chris Horner, who is one of the most accomplished U.S. road cyclists ever.

For nearly 40 years, the downtown criterium was a perennial favorite among local cycling fans, drawing thousands of spectators, but it went away with 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 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.

“Gravel is the hot thing right now,” Williams said. “But road cycling is kind of the core of everything. I’m doing what I can to help the road scene stay strong, and race events like this that really help.”