A front wheel, thin as a razor cuts through the Welsh mist, an almost-perfect mirror image of handlebars frames the foreground just above, as riders push into place ahead. A second passes and Harry Macfarlane appears, an out-of-proportion megalith, fanning the brakes before pushing hard over Aberytwyth's relentless cobblestones. After thirty seconds the short snapshot into the National Criterium Championships is over, 2,000 likes up and counting.
Crit racing - or criterium racing - involves riders competing for the fastest time around a lapped circuit. Usually held in towns or cities, these races can attract thousands of fans, who have front-row access to riding that doesn’t flash past in a peloton-blur, but rather loops round and round again for an afternoon of action. Riders like Macfarlane are increasingly strapping a GoPro to their headsets and capturing their rides for Instagram and YouTube.
Crit racing has been dealt a few blows in recent years. Cycling as a whole saw races depleting in both crit and road, with 60% of races stopped or interrupted between 2015 and 2023 - with the Tour Series finally ending after 2022.
“It feels like a lot of people don't see it as as professional as road racing, or as big as road racing, or as deserving of attention as road racing,” says Owen Lake of Monument Cycling, his passion for the sport ringing down the line on our call.
“You'd never say the 100 metre sprint isn't as deserving as the marathon. They're just two different athletic events, and that's how I see crit racing and road racing, and I don't think they're at the exclusion of each one. I think that together, they're both just incredible parts of cycling that people should be able to enjoy.”
Despite what Lake says about crit racing, it has maintained road racing’s messy sister, the grassroots, town centre sprint to its elongated endurance spectacle. But, as cycling in the UK begins to drag itself back from the lull after the Team Sky/Wiggins era glory, it is bringing with it a generation of riders seeking to bridge the coverage gap still present in criterium racing, through social media.
“The growth of crit racing online correlates with the growth of social media online,” Lake said, his YouTube and Instagram (@monument_hq) channels currently sitting at 7.38k and 99.8k followers respectively.
“Now everyone can access the world if they want, which is incredible," he continued. "And I think crit racing in particular lends itself to exciting personalities and exciting content. You get people like Harry Mac who [...] they're cool people, and they want to put content out there, and now they can actually do that. So you've got this growth. And it's, it's pretty cool to see how the media landscape has become a bit more democratic for those people actually racing and taking part in the sport.”
Cut back to Harry Macfarlane’s (@harrymac03) Instagram page. 14.8k followers. In the small icon by his name, he sits up on his bike, one leg splayed out for support as he gestures on a phone call, phone to his ear, shades on. His latest post is a POV video of a gravel ride, the 350 degree GoPro positioned high on his chest, capturing his gritted teeth, red-blonde beard and flaring nostrils balanced on a tiny, spherical world. It’s fun, a bit bonkers, and is currently at 300 views after 4 hours live.
“It captures everything,” Macfarlane said of the camera he attaches to his headset.
“It’s so important for when you want to properly make some good content for bike racing, because things don't happen just ahead of you, they happen behind you, to the side of you. It's very fast paced, and a lot of things happen over that course of an hour, versus a road race, where everything's a bit more chilled out. I only really use it for crits and the circuit series is the best place to use it. A lot of stuff happens in an hour. There's a lot more carnage, and although crashing is bad, people love watching a crash.
“I think overall, it does for the sport in general, is good to have to let people kind of film and post the content around it.”
With over 2.35 billion people using Instagram Reels, and over 1 billion TikTok users according to the IMG Digital Trends 2025 report, short form videos are in increasing demand, especially amongst Gen Z and millennial users. And when it comes to sports, over 51% of fans get their content from Facebook, 46% from YouTube and 31% on Instagram.
The impact of seeing people race, or simply just getting out and having fun on their bikes, all on a phone screen you carry around 24/7 can go one of two ways: it can facilitate an evening of “doom scrolling” that keeps you locked in a dopamine cycle never to do the thing that felt so inspiring three reels before or it can trigger the “demonstration effect”, whereby users see one of their favourite riders racing a crit and think - maybe I can do that too.
I might never have picked up a mountain bike had I not been hooked on the ASMR crunch of a rear wheel kicking up dry dirt (thanks Rachel Atherton), and I won't be alone.
“A lot of people watch different races on TV, but if you look at the amount of views on videos online of some crit race in God knows where we get as well. It's like, it could be the same, like, double or triple. Yeah. It's definitely not to be overlooked," Macfarlane added.
And it’s not just Harry Mac and Monument making videos of crit racing and sharing it on their social media channels, Lucy Choules (@lucychoules) popped up on my discover page on Instagram last week. In her short video, the VIA Crit becomes a game in which she loses hearts and regains them, energy points played in the top part of the frame as the video flits between iPhone camera and 360-degree rider views. She’s also the reason we first heard about the London-Edinburgh-London event being cancelled - hurray for Instagram stories.
The videos Macfarlane and Choules are making aren’t “breaking the internet” just yet, but they do show the realities of racing - and preparing to race - in a way traditional output never has. You visit Macfarlane’s Instagram page for slick edits, stream-of-consciousness hot takes and close calls during races, and you visit Choules’s for the honest reality of the pre-ride set up, the slog of the start and the elation of just getting out and cycling.
They are part of a new generation of content creators sharing their love of sport, and telling us about it in a way that feels truthful, and authentic, if a little messy at times.
“The crit spirit is community,” Lake mused at the end of our call.
“We're running the Cambridge Criterium, and the huge aspect of that is a free event for the people of Cambridge, like that's why I'm doing it, and that's what I want to achieve. So it's about creating community in the places the races are, community for the people competing in it, and community for the spectators and the attendees and the fans.”
Social media is part of our world now, whether we like it or not. And cycling is existing more and more online, too. Watching riders on my phone has made me want to pick up my bike to race. In that way, I don’t know whether social media is shaping cycling, but it may just have contributed to one more rider on the start line at my local crit race. Watch this space.
