Top 5 Storylines From The 2026 American Criterium Cup
Written by: Zach Nehr
Imagine taking a 10-hour flight to a city you’ve never been to before, stepping off the plane, and grabbing a ride to your host house. You don’t know anyone here, you still need to build your bike in the driveway, and it won’t be long before you're lining up for a professional bike race where you will average 30 mph for 75 minutes. Fighting the jet lag and swollen travel legs, you are soon bumping elbows with riders from all around the world, battling for thousand-dollar primes while also saving energy for the final sprint.
Coming out of the final turn, the heavens open with 200 meters to go, and you sprint for the win in front of a screaming crowd. It all feels like a dream…but this is exactly what Barbara Guarischi did to win the final round of the American Criterium Cup.
This story is not too dissimilar from so many others in the continent’s biggest crit series. Hundreds of riders flew in from around the world from June to September, many with high hopes in the ACC. Across six races from Oklahoma to Missouri, only a handful of riders found the top step of the podium. But the stories that came out of this year’s ACC are even more significant than the final results page. There were back-and-forth battles, season-jeopardizing surgeries, and photo finishes across the entire ACC season.
In this piece, we are going to recap the Top 5 storylines of the 2026 American Criterium Cup, starting with the eleventh-hour champions at The Gateway Cup.
1. Last Chance Winners in St. Louis
The Gateway Cup was the final opportunity for riders to salvage something from the ACC season. Many were focused on the overall standings, be it the red leader's jersey or the green jersey as leader of the Davis Phinney Foundation Sprint Prime competition. Only a handful of riders could don the leader’s jerseys from MUMU Apparel, but there was still a race win on the line.
After a season filled with near misses, Preston Eye (Clif Family Drifters Cycling) won the final round of the ACC with a bike throw, taking an emotional win in front of his family. Eye had been one of those riders knocking on the door of a breakthrough the entire season, and his last-ditch win moved him up to second in the overall standings.
Justin Williams finished 8th in St. Louis, doing more than enough to secure the red jersey as overall winner, but it was the team competition that came down to the wire. After four months of racing, thousands of miles traveled, countless sprints, primes, and points-scoring opportunities, the ACC Men’s Team Competition came down to the tiebreaker. Both L39ION of Los Angeles and Team Cadence Cyclery pb Waldo Racing scored 303 points, but by the skin of their teeth, L39ION won the tiebreaker in St. Louis and took home the winner prize of $3,000.
There was only a single point that separated one of the Pro Women’s competitions, and it all came down to the final Davis Phinney Foundation Sprint Prime in St. Louis. Claudia Marcks (Pedla Racing Division) took the sprint to earn maximum points and overtake Holly Breck (L39ION of Los Angeles) by a single point to win the green jersey from MUMU Apparel. It was a brilliant points design by the ACC that made the green jersey competition come down to the final sprint at the Gateway Cup, and Marcks made it count.
In the Junior Girls 15-16 field, Evie Alverado (Femme Kermesse) overtook Camille Culbertson (TWENTY28 Aevolo) to win the ACC Overall competition on the final day of the season. Alverado took home the red jersey from MUMU Apparel, the same jersey featured in the ACC Pro races.
2. Feel-Good Stories of the Year
Not every cycling story ends with a race win, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t a number of feel-good stories throughout the ACC season. Starting with Lucas Bourgoyne (Team Cadence Cyclery pb Waldo Racing) and his season-ending surgery…or so we thought.
When Bourgoyne won Race #4 of the American Crit Cup in Chicago, it looked like he had a strong chance to win the overall competition. He was sitting just two points behind Justin Williams when disaster struck – Bourgoyne needed emergency surgery to have his appendix removed, which meant that he wouldn’t be able to ride a bike for weeks. Race #5 in Salt Lake City was out of the question, and any normal person would have said the same about the season finale in St. Louis. But Bourgoyne is built different, and after six weeks without racing, the Texan not only raced the Gateway Cup, he finished 11th in the final sprint. That earned Bourgoyne enough points to finish third overall in the ACC, a remarkable achievement for someone who had their appendix removed in the middle of the season.
Another feel-good story coming out of Chicago was Paola Muñoz (Fearless Femme p/b The Beasley Firm), a rider who only finished third in the ACC race, but was the happiest rider in the world at the finish line. Muñoz lined up alongside her daughter and was leading the Chicago GRIT overall series (a 10-day crit series separate from the American Crit Cup) coming into the Fulton Market Grand Prix. It was the final stage of Chicago GRIT, and Muñoz managed her best finish of the ACC season with third. That was enough for her to win Chicago GRIT overall, and she was able to celebrate with her daughter on the streets of the Fulton Market district.
Among many feel-good stories throughout the season, we have to point out the surprise win in Race #2 of the ACC. On the famous Downer Avenue course at the Tour of America’s Dairyland, Bryony Botha upset the favorites to win ahead of Skylar Schneider. The New Zealander was shocked to take the win, so shocked that she immediately thought about telling her dad. “I don’t think my dad’s gonna believe me when I tell him I won a sprint!” Botha said after the race.
Botha was one of many international riders who found success at this year’s ACC, a testament to the international appeal of American crit racing.
3. International Riders Were Better Than Ever, But the Americans Came Out on Top in the Overall
After winning ACC Race #2 at the Tour of America’s Dairyland, George Jackson (Whoosh - NZ Cycling Project) said, "the team has been coming here for 18-19 years, and we’re getting better and better each year. New Zealand is a small country and we’re far away, so we don’t have races like this…We love coming here, the crowds were insane, everyone’s insane…it’s so much fun.”
Dario Rapps (DCC) said the same thing after winning Race #1 in Tulsa, remarking “There is nothing in Germany that is nearly comparable to this. You are so crazy! How loud this crowd is cheering, this atmosphere, we are totally hooked.”
There is a reason that so many riders flew in from around the world for the American Crit Cup, especially since many have found great success. Germany’s Maurice Ballerstedt won the ACC Men’s title in 2025, while Swiss rider Aline Seitz took the women’s title. At the beginning of this year’s ACC season, we asked the question: “Can the Americans reclaim the top spots on the podium in 2026?”
The answer was yes, as Skylar Schneider and Justin Williams won the Women’s and Men’s Overall titles, respectively. Seitz repeated her runner-up performance by finishing second overall in 2026, while Australian Claudia Marcks finished third overall while also winning the green jersey. Three American men rounded out the ACC Overall podium, while another Australian, Owen Gillot (Chaney Windows and Doors Big Shark pb Pastaria) won the green jersey.
While two Australians won the Davis Phinney Foundation Sprint Prime competition, there were four other nationalities that won ACC rounds this year in addition to the Americans. Germany, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Italy all had race winners, including Italian Barbara Guarischi who won in The Hill’s Italian neighborhood at the Gateway Cup.
Not only is the American Crit Cup a proving ground for international talent, it is also a pipeline for American bike racers who are ready to make the next step in their cycling careers.
4. ACC Juniors Series Is a Pipeline For Future Stars
Alongside every Pro race in the American Crit Cup was the ACC Junior Series sponsored by Renaissance Financial. The competition is a season-long event that awards the top juniors with the same MUMU Apparel jerseys as the Pros across four different categories: Junior Girls 15-16, Junior Girls 17-18, Junior Boys 15-16, and Junior Boys 17-18. As previously mentioned, Evie Alverado took home the red jersey in the Junior Girls 15-16 category, while Tessa Beebe (BYRDS Cycling) won the Junior Girls 17-18 overall.
In the Junior Boys 15-16 category, Finnley Sonnemann (CXD Trek Bikes) rounded out a dominant season to take the win, while Aiden Wyant (Cura Racing) more than doubled his opponents’ point totals to win the Junior Boys 17-18.
The ACC Junior Series wasn’t the only place that we saw impressive juniors take to the streets this season, as we saw 18-year-old Dylan Haynes (Boulder Junior Cycling) finish in the Top 10 of the Pro Men Overall. Haynes was still eligible for the junior category, but he decided to race against the pros instead, not only competing against them, but finishing 10th overall. Haynes’ performance was the perfect example of the ACC Junior Series being a direct pipeline to the pro ranks.
The ACC Junior Series has served as a proving ground for up-and-coming riders, and there are several riders competing in the Pro races that came through ACC junior racing. The explicit goal of the series is building that pipeline: turning junior competitors into the next wave of American professional cyclists. You can read more about the ACC Junior Series here.
Our final story of the season is actually a story of two parts, one of dominance, and one of perseverance.
5. Two Very Different Paths to Become the ACC Overall Champion
Justin Williams only won a single round of the ACC, yet, he dominated the overall standings. In fact, a different rider won each round of the Men’s ACC, all the way from Dario Rapps at Tulsa Tough to Preston Eye at the Gateway Cup. Justin Williams actually had a rough start to the season, missing the podium in Race #1 at Tulsa Tough, and completely missing out on the top five in Race #2 at the Tour of America’s Dairyland.
But then he found his groove in Race #3, taking second place at the Boise Twilight Crit, while his teammate Tyler Williams won from a solo breakaway. From there, the momentum kept on building, and Justin Williams took a big win at the Salt Lake Criterium to add to his lead in the overall standings.
With a Top 10 finish in Race #6 at the Gateway Cup, Justin Williams sealed the overall victory with relative ease, closing out the season in a much better way than he started it. Williams’ victory was proof that consistency and perseverance were the key to overall victory in the American Crit Cup. He had only finished on the podium twice in six races, but he took home the red jersey with a massive gap over second place, Preston Eye.
The journey to the red jersey from MUMU Apparel was a much different one for Skylar Schneider who started so strong, she hardly needed to show up in St. Louis. The former WorldTour rider won three out of the first four ACC rounds, only finishing second to Botha by inches at Race #2 in Wisconsin. Her L39ION of Los Angeles helped guide her to the final sprints, but there were plenty of moments where Skylar Schneider was closing gaps on her own. She was, without a doubt, the strongest rider in the entire ACC, and a deserving winner of the red jersey.
With that, the 2026 American Crit Cup comes to a close. It has been an incredible season filled with countless storylines, emotional victories, heart-breaking losses, and last-gasp race wins. 2026 featured one of the most diverse racing fields in ACC history, complete with 10 different race winners across 12 Pro races. In the end, Skylar Schneider and Justin Williams took home the red jerseys as ACC Overall Champions, while Claudia Marcks and Owen Gillot took the green jerseys back to Australia as winners of the Davis Phinney Foundation Sprint Prime competition.
See you next year!
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2026 ACC Final Results
The 2026 ACC season zig-zagged across the US from June to September, ultimately ending in St. Louis at The Bommarito Audi West County Gateway Cup. Below are the individual race winners in each round of the ACC, plus the Overall winners at the end of the season.
ACC Race | Pro Men Winner | Pro Women Winner
#1: Saint Francis Tulsa Tough | Dario Rapps | Skylar Schneider
#2: Tour of America's Dairyland | George Jackson | Bryony Botha
#3: Bailey & Glasser LLP Twilight Crit | Tyler Williams | Skylar Schneider
#4: CHICAGO GRIT Fulton Market Grand Prix | Lucas Bourgoyne | Skylar Schneider
#5: Salt Lake Criterium | Justin Williams | Aline Seitz
#6: The Bommarito Audi West County Gateway Cup | Preston Eye | Barbara Guarischi
American Criterium Cup Overall Winners | Justin Williams | Skylar Schneider
Davis Phinney Foundation Sprint Prime Winners | Owen Gillot | Claudia Marcks
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ACC Junior 15-16 Overall Winners | Finnley Sonnemann | Evie Alverado
ACC Junior 17-18 Overall Winners | Aiden Wyant | Tessa Beebe
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Stay Connected – Recap all the action from the 2026 American Crit Cup season:
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Published September 2026 | American Crit Cup Season Recap