The seventh Criterium Gijón — Spain’s fixed gear crit race — was held on the 29th of July, and it was the second year that the prizes were new custom bikes by a guest frame builder. The honour this year fell to Madrid’s Arregui Velázquez.
Fixed gear criterium races have grown, over the last few years, into something like a phenomenon. While the most famous, the Red Hook Crit, relies on big buck corporate sponsorship, the Criterium Gijón is proud to maintain a punk ethic.
Last year, the organisers took a different approach to the prize pool. Rather than collecting a booty from sponsor’s goods, they decided to make the prizes something the winners would actually use.
For the 2016 edition, Legor Cicli built two custom bikes for the men’s and women’s finalists. This year Arregui Velázquez was invited to contribute his skills, and the result was a bold and striking pair of race machines.
Arregui Velázquez has been building frames since 2009. He is self-taught, but has extensively travelled to Italy and Japan to learn from the masters, and spends time with retired local builders to soak up their knowledge as well.
He also has a PhD in Chemical Physics and has been playing saxophone for more than 15 years, so you know he’s an artistic soul. He’s a sole trader and by the look of his previous work, isn’t afraid of pushing design boundaries, yet still respects the traditional.
Columbus is a primary patrocinadore and donated the raw material for Arregui to work with. Both frames were fillet brazed from a mixture of HSS and Zona tubes with typically tight crit racing geometry.
Columbus has completely reinvigorated their range of carbon forks over the last twelve months, and two of their new forks made their way on to the winner’s frames, along with a Nesta Velox wheelset and Brick Lane Bikes’ Notorious cranks.
The bikes’ black and pink colour scheme is consistent with the 2017 Criterium Gijón branding, and the graphics on the frame were applied by Barcelona’s Kilian Ramirez, a master of hot rod finishes — and the final result is a covetable first prize.
Arregui Velázquez Website | Facebook | Instagram
Criterium Gijón Website | Facebook | Instagram
Special thanks to Dani AP for the photos.
