The Red Hook Criterium is an unsanctioned race featuring fixed gear bicycles competing over multiple laps of a fast twisty route within the desolate streets in the Bovisa area of Milan.
The competition include the best street riders from the United States battling against a mixture of Italian street racers and elite level Gran Fondo riders.
By LODOVICO PIGNATTI-MORANO: Last year Italians turned up at the first ever Red Hook Crit Milan as if they were going to the cinema to see an Italo-American ganster film - they giggled at the back of the start line and chattered away easily amongst themselves.
At some point, as Dave Trimble explained the rules to the racers, Crihs, the current Monster Track champion and a man known to not mince words, turned around and roared at these giggly Italians, "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" At this point the Italians realised, perhaps too late in the case of many, that this wasn’t a gangster film but the real thing, their knees began to shake - they were a generation brought up without a notion of competition, slackers living off of the accumulated capital of miserly savings-orientated generations; they’d never known hunger and its accompanying adrenaline – not until that moment. Red Hook Milan introduced them first-hand, and for the first time, to a vicious urban mentality.
This year the faces of Italian competitors returning for a second attempt at the race (we’re almost drawn to call them, very seriously, veterans) are gaunt, aged – their eyes seem to flicker more quickly, in fragments of hesitation, they seem wary, they giggle less. A dangerously competitive atmosphere awaits the participants, an electric air of fear and hunger.
For more information: redhookcrit.com
