Chuck Pontius Memorial Criterium – 60+

Written by: Bill Lupo

The Chuck Pontius Memorial Criterium is one of the closest and easiest to get to crits for us living in Santa Barbara. The M50/60+ 1/2/3 offered a comfortable start time of 9:45 am so I had this on my race calendar once again for 2025. When I registered I knew Andrew Nuckles would be there so I was expecting the two of us. A very welcome late-evening text from Robert Neary arrived so now we’re a team of three. During warmup, we all chatted about race strategy and who to watch.

For me, it seemed like a fast start with no time to get settled. Lap 5 was one of the fastest and the pace rarely eased up. Team E-Voke had an impressive showing with at least ten at the start. Adding a couple other strong teams meant there was a lot of firepower in a field of 49 racers.

Andrew was often on the front or off the front multiple times. I stayed near the front and followed any moves that looked promising. Robert was right there and made it in a few moves. But this time, unlike last year, nothing was getting away. This isn’t a flat crit and we were lapping at 92-93 seconds with a race average of 26.9 mph.

Take a look at the video on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfp-0_suZyY

In a combined field and not easily knowing who was 50+ or 60+ meant everyone was racing to the line.

When the results were posted, I was 1st, Robert was 2nd in M60+ and Andrew 27th in M50+