Speed, danger and the exhilaration of bicycle racing is returning to Norman this spring with the inaugural Maverick Criterium, a two-day festival of blistering competition in the streets of Downtown Norman and the Historic Campus Corner. And fans can stand curbside as some of the fastest bike racers in the Midwest lean through corners and blow down straightaways at 30 miles per hour.
Powered by the Norman Sports Commission, the Maverick event is a celebration of Norman’s love for cycling. Whether on the racecourse, commuting to class, riding on country roads or mountain biking through the woods, the bicycle is part of Norman’s culture and way of life.
Set for Saturday and Sunday – May 31 through June 1 – Maverick will feature a host of U.S.A. Cycling-sanctioned races for men and women of all ages and skill levels. Riders will race lap after lap through Campus Corner and Downtown, competing for thousands of dollars in prize money.
Saturday’s 1.1-mile course will tour the Campus Corner District and swing through the University of Oklahoma’s lush North Oval. Tight turns and fast straights will add to the excitement as racers battle for position. Sunday’s race will be Downtown, where riders will compete on an ultra-fast, .75-mile figure-eight configuration, allowing spectators an almost constant view of the action. Race schedules and other event information are available at www.mavcrit.com.
No bicycle race would be complete without food, drink and music, and the Maverick Criterium will be no exception with locally owned restaurants and craft brewers rolling out the red carpet on both days.
This may be the first go-round for Maverick, but bicycle racing is nothing new for Norman. The bike-friendly community has a long history of racing. dating back to the 1980s when criteriums, road races and time trials were an annual rite of spring. Norman’s 89er Stage Race was a national event for several years, including 1989, when Oklahoma celebrated its Land Run Centennial by hosting the 9th U.S. Olympic Festival.
Lifelong Norman cyclist and former U.S. Cycling Federation Race Official Hal Cantwell remembers the race drawing hundreds of licensed riders every year, including elite international competitors such as 1984 Olypic Gold Medalist Connie Carpenter-Phinney and Chris Horner, winner of the 2011 Tour of California and 2013 winner of the Vuelta a Espana, the annual multi-day stage race though Spain.
“We had a number of folks who went on to the European tour or peloton,” Cantwell said. “Some folks, you could see in the Vuelta or in the Tour de France. The person that was probably the most noteworthy was Chris Horner.”
As for Maverick, race director Aaron Dyer says he’s excited to bring racing back, and he believes the event will spotlight Norman’s rich cycling heritage.
Scheduled for the last weekend in May, Maverick is a prelude to the Saint Francis Tulsa Tough event, a three-day series of criteriums held in Tulsa the second weekend in June. Tulsa Tough is considered among the nation’s top bicycle races, known for drawing professional teams from across the country.
“USA Cycling welcomed Maverick onto its calendar of sanctioned events,” Dyer said. “And the response from racers has been strong, drawing interest from across the country. We’ll have the best of the best coming from all over the region.”
Dyer says organizing a race like Maverick has been easy in a community like Norman, which has a long history of cycling with a large cycling community, an energetic bike club and several great bike shops.
Home to the University of Oklahoma, Norman has always had a soft spot for bicycles, whether they’re being used by students to get to class or by the local club, training for the next event. Recent surveys suggest Norman residents want bicycles to be part of the community, even people who don’t ride bikes. Maybe that’s because the bicycle represents a kind of clean and healthy lifestyle that fits well within the city’s culture and self-image.
But support for cycling is not just an attitude. The city has been putting its money where its mouth is for years, leading the way in the mid-1970s, participating in a federal program to establish designated bike routes throughout the city to ensure rider safety by alerting drivers to be extra cautious.
And through the decades, the city has maintained its focus, matching local funds with federal dollars to build an extensive network of paved multi-modal trails, making cycling through town safer and more accessible to the growing community of riders. Outside of city proper, Norman cyclists have easy access to an enormous array of low-traffic, rural roads, stretching from the northern shores of Lake Stanley Draper to the Canadian River at the southern tip of Cleveland County.
So, Norman truly has something for every cyclist, whether they’re just touring their neighborhoods, riding a mountain bike though the woods, jumping bike ramps or completing a metric century. Norman’s system of trails and bike routes are growing by the year, and the mountain bike trails at Clear Bay State Park at Lake Thunderbird are among the state’s best. The city’s 12-acre bike park has enough trails, jumps, ramps and drop zones to test the most experienced rider’s skills. And for those who love to ride miles, they can just pedal away from their front doors and find friendly streets, smooth roads, rolling hills and the kind of natural beauty that cyclists from other communities could only dream of.
