Brookfield hosts second annual day of bicycle racing

Professional bicycle racing returned to Brookfield Wednesday, July 24, when the village hosted the second annual Cycle Brookfield Criterium downtown.

The event was one of 10 daylong racing events that made up this year’s Chicago Grit, formerly known as the Intelligentsia Cup, an annual criterium bike race series that takes place across Chicago’s western and northern suburbs before ending in the Windy City itself. Once again, Brookfield’s day of racing was hosted by Cycle Brookfield, a local nonprofit that advocates for safer and more frequent bike usage in town.

Like last year, crowds of Brookfielders, residents of nearby villages and even international tourists gathered throughout the day, with numbers growing throughout the day as people got out of work and the professional women’s and men’s races approached. Spectators watched hundreds of bike racers take to the course, ranging in skill level from novice to professional across nine races.

Cycle Brookfield President Chris Valadez said in an interview Monday that this year’s Cycle Brookfield Criterium was “pretty successful.” He said this year’s event drew about 5,000 attendees to downtown Brookfield based on drone footage obtained by Brookfield police, about 1,000 more people than last year’s event, adding that Brookfield seemed to have one of the most highly attended races of Chicago Grit based on footage from other host villages.

Racers started on Grand Boulevard, heading southeast before turning north onto Prairie Avenue. From there, they turned west onto Grant Avenue, north onto Sunnyside Avenue and west onto Lincoln Avenue before turning back into Grand Boulevard and passing the finish line. According to Cycle Brookfield, the course was 0.86 miles long.

Valadez said racers in the men’s pro race hit top speeds of about 41 mph while those in the women’s pro race topped out at about 34 mph.

The schedule also included a family fun ride sponsored by Gears2You, a bicycle repair and rental shop in Riverside, between the women’s and men’s pro races near the end of the day.

While the crowd grew throughout the day, it may not have appeared as dense as last year’s evening crowd to attendees of both events, which Chicago Grit Marketing Director Bekah Collins attributed to new viewing measures this year near the Linda Sokol Francis Brookfield Library. Attendees were once again able to watch along Grand Boulevard, with many congregating near the course’s first turn onto Prairie Avenue.

“This is a huge course, and I don’t want to say it makes it challenging, but it changes the dynamics” of the crowds, Collins said Wednesday. “It’s really long to walk, and [Brookfield] set up a speaker down at [the library] end this year, which changes things too, because now people have two different areas that they can view from.”

While the weather stayed clear throughout Wednesday, heavy evening rain the day before led Chicago Grit officials to cancel the professional men’s race in Lombard, the hosting village. As a result, Collins said, racers in Brookfield were eligible to win cash prizes worth double the amount in other villages. While the primes ranged in price from $50-$250 for the other days’ races, Brookfield’s primes were worth $100-$500 each.

Those cash prizes, called primes — pronounced “preems” — were awarded to the first racer to finish a lap around the course, which Collins said pushed cyclists to choose between sprinting for the money or keeping a steady pace with their eyes on first place. The existence of primes is one of the things setting criterium racing apart from other kinds of bike racing, she said.

“[Cash primes make] everything a lot more exciting, because obviously the teams want to go after the money. We call it ‘animating the race,’ which means picking up the pace,” she said. “It’s [at] their discretion, the announcers.’ They have the money; they get to decide when they throw it on the table” and announce a prime lap.

With crowds flocking to Brookfield, businesses downtown benefitted from the extra business, and at least one owner said she had a better idea of how much business her shop would get Wednesday after overpreparing for last year’s criterium.

“It was our first year last year, so I knew how to staff this year and knew how to bump up inventory and pace myself,” said Wendy Moore, owner of Daisy’s Treats, on Wednesday. She said Daisy’s was overstaffed last year after the event’s organizers overestimated the crowd size for the earlier events in the day: “This year, I had to condense it down and be here myself.”

Moore said she and the other workers at Daisy’s asked customers if they were from Brookfield, and, as of Wednesday around 3:30 p.m., she estimated that 90% of the store’s customers so far had been from out of town, although she said she expected more locals to come in throughout the rest of the evening.

Anika Brants and Taylor Tompson are cyclists from the Milton Women’s U23 Project, a women’s cycling team based in Ontario, Canada, who raced in Chicago Grit and in the Cycle Brookfield Criterium. Several members of the team raced in the Women’s Cat 2/3 race; their teammate, Elly Moore, won the race, while Tompson placed fifth. Elly Moore is not related to Wendy Moore.

“It’s a really nice area. I mean, the course is super fun; with two really sharp corners, it makes it super interesting,” Brants said Wednesday. She said she liked that the criterium’s course ran through downtown Brookfield because it gave the racers easy access to restaurants and cafes they could enjoy during the downtime between races.

Brants, Tompson and their teammates said they enjoyed seeing Brookfield residents who live along the course watching the races from their front lawns or porches as well as seeing people of all ages cheer them on from the sidelines, especially compared to races in Ontario.

“Most of our races are on empty farm roads where it’s cheap to close the roads,” Tompson said. “There’s no one in sight, maybe a squirrel, and you don’t get the same people near the course, like, ‘You’re so cool!’”

Valadez said one of the biggest changes to the event after last year’s criterium was the closure of the Prairie Avenue railroad crossing as part of the village’s street improvements, which coincided with the criterium and lasted through Friday. Access to the intersection with Prairie Avenue from Brookfield Avenue was also closed Wednesday, allowing spectators and food trucks to set up shop close to the race course with little risk from drivers.

“Spectator parking had been earmarked along the Brookfield Ave. Metra train line, the BNSF Metra line, so naturally people are going to park there, and their first experience of the race is going to be at that turn one intersection,” he said. “Having food trucks, having a safe viewing spot, is something that we learned last year and applied, of course, with the village’s assistance to shut down train tracks and to allow the congregation to happen.”

Other changes, Valadez said, included encouraging guests to congregate near Brookfield’s library by hiring a backfield announcer for the course’s final turn, placing wayfinding signs for attendees from outside Brookfield and adding a pace car, which drove ahead of the cyclists to ensure the road was clear and safe for them or to slow the race down if someone were to run out onto the track.

He said the car, a Mustang, was sponsored by Irish Times and that some “Brookfield dignitaries” got to ride in it, including Village Trustee Nicole Gilhooley and Brookfield Chamber of Commerce Treasurer Amy Weinert.

Valadez also shouted out the Brookfield Women’s Club, who he said managed the day’s volunteer force while he and other members of the Cycle Brookfield had their focus elsewhere; he said the group got 75 volunteers to sign up, “which is tremendous.”

While Valadez said that next year’s Cycle Brookfield Criterium will feature even more changes, he and his team are taking a well-deserved break from thinking about Chicago Grit 2025 — at least, until August rolls around.