Racers in the pro women’s category ride around a corner during the Cascade Cycling Classic criterium on Aug. 10, 2024, in Bend. (Joe Kline/Bulletin file photo)

Central Oregon’s favorite bike race is returning for the second-straight year as a one-day criterium in downtown Bend on Saturday.

The Cascade Cycling Classic Criterium will feature bike racing on the streets of downtown from noon to 9 p.m. The pro women’s race starts at 5:40 p.m. and they race for one hour. The pro men’s race starts at 7:25 p.m. and they race for 1 hour, 20 minutes.

Last summer, the race was held in August, but due to air-quality concerns from likely wildfires during late summer, the race was moved to June.

The downtown criterium was a perennial favorite among local cycling fans, drawing thousands of spectators, but had not been staged since 2017 until last year. 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.

Elite level racers will be coming from all over the country to race the iconic downtown criterium course, testing their technical skills and endurance. The event is produced by and a benefit for the Bend-based Horner Cycling Foundation, founded two years ago by Bend’s Chris Horner, who is one of the most accomplished U.S. road cyclists ever. The mission of the 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,” according to hornercyclingfoundation.com.

The prize purse for the Cascade Cycling Classic’s pro men’s and women’s fields is the biggest purse for a one-day race in the U.S., according to a news release. The purse includes an equal payout between the pro men and the pro women of $20,000 each.

Racers will ride as many laps as they can in a time determined by their category. The start and finish line will be located on NW Wall Street, near the Tower Theatre. Racers will head north and
take a right onto NW Oregon Avenue and then a right onto NW Bond Street, followed by a left turn onto NW Minnesota Avenue, and then a right turn onto NW Lava Street to NW Franklin Avenue and back to Wall Street.

The lap is approximately .7 of a mile and the streets will be closed to vehicular traffic starting at 9 a.m.

Races begin at noon and finish at 8:45 p.m. The Kiddie Crit (0-8 yrs old) will take place at 4:45 p.m., followed by the Bend Classic Mile run at 5:15 p.m.

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

Horner, who often raced in the Cascade Classic before his rise in the European ranks, finished as high as eighth in the Tour de France and won the Tour of Spain in 2013 at the age of 41, becoming the oldest winner of any of cycling’s Grand Tours.

For more information, visit cascadecyclingclasic.com.