The man who dominated the Red Hook Crit fixed gear races in 2016 and also won the Red Bull Last Stand 2016, Colin Strickland, is leaving the most successful team and couple RHC has ever known. Colin Strickland and the Slovenian powerhouse Aldo Ino Ilesic dominated the RHC series in 2016, but they will no longer be team mates in 2017. Being separated, one can expect them to become massive competition for each other in the upcoming season. Although Colin will lose Aldo as a partner in the race, he is getting some other strong allies on board. Read further for all the info!

Text: Brian Megens

Header Image: Tornanti.CC

Colin’s new team is founded with the support of Intelligentsia Coffee, Pinarello, and Giordana and will go on the road as Intelligentsia Racing. The team will consist out of three riders. Next to Colin that will be Marius Petrache, the number 6 in the 2016 RHC series and current UCI road National Champion of Romania, and Stefan Rothe, winner of the Red Bull Last Man Standing geared category and teammate of Colin in the road team Elbowz. Colin believes in the team of three as “it is a magic number”, and more importantly, he thinks that adding more riders won’t make any difference as only a small number of riders can put themselves in the front of the race.

The main goal of the team is simple, win races. Colin does not want to speak out the aim to win the RHC Series again as “you win the GC by winning races, if you win enough races you will be the GC winner too, so I focus on winning races and from there see where I stand in the GC.” Next to RHC, Colin aims at spending time in Europe between the RHC London and Milan to compete in the smaller fixed gear crits in Europe, and to ride some road races. Colin will leave his current road race team Elbowz for it to make fixed gear crit racing his number one priority. Next to this, Colin will be to compete in some gravel, CX, and road races.

The team kits, provided by Giordana, will be of custom design for each RHC, but for training they will wear the black and white kit. At the time of the interview, it was unsure what bike will be used by the team but with the support of the big bicycle brand Pinarello getting a decent bike should not be a problem. The same goes for getting some good coffee btw.