Cycling Roses
Victoire and Eléonore are riding 25,000 km from Alaska to Patagonia to highlight 12 women recovering from cancer treatments through sports.
A few months ago, Victoire Bonaud sent me a message about her plans to ride from Alaska to Patagonia while interviewing cancer survivors about how they use sports to recover and regain their physical and mental strength.
I almost said no, because we are just swamped in projects - and then it’s better to say no immediately than to entertain it for a bit, waste everybody’s time and then say no. Plus, part of our Relentless Simplicity philosophy is that we only focus on making bikes better and making customers happy, nothing else. No sponsorships or advertising, just word of mouth.
Luckily, it was clear that Victoire was not looking for a sponsorship but a collaboration, and the one exception we make to our Relentless Simplicity is that we love collaborations. It's just something we enjoy organizing, almost more as a hobby than as part of our job (which many people would argue is already a hobby).
So we had a call where Victoire explained that in her “normal” life, she works in Paris at Proctor&Gamble, but her hobby was riding and in recent years her rides had become longer and longer. Together with her friend Eleonore, she had decided to take that to its logical conclusion: take a sabbatical and ride from Alaska to Patagonia.
Not just any ride
What actually caught my attention most was that were organizing a parallel project. While they would be riding from North to South, they planned to interview people who have used sports - any sport, not just cycling - to regain their physical and mental strength after cancer treatment.
And this was more than an idea, they had actually already done most of the work for both projects. Victoire seemed very professional and organized, so I figured we could give some modest support and she could take it from there.
Long story short, based on their wishlist we pulled together some amazing friends in the bike industry and they all immediately agreed to help. Arnaud Teston of Carte Blanche Custom agreed to custom paint the WIDE frames based on the colors and design that Victoire and Eleonore had in mind. They did an incredible job getting everything organized despite the time pressure and holiday timing.
Anne Hed from (obviously) HED Cycling chipped in with two of the first sets ever made of the Lancaster G25 gravel wheels. She even added in-house made custom decals matching the paint.
Ben Raby from SRAM moved heaven and earth to find groupsets with incredible speed. You may think it would be easy for a large company like SRAM to find a couple of groupsets, but they work with such efficiency that they produce exactly what is needed. When we order our groupsets, that's when they start to build them, not before, and still they manage to ship those groupsets within 30 days. Pretty impressive.
Finally we had Nick Broadbent and James Bracey fit the bikes out with the latest Tailfin gear. All in all there was only one supplier who didn't respond to my request. Guess they were even busier than us :-)
Our French distributor and longtime friend Alexandre Cauchy took care of the assembly and the morning they finished, our trusted photographer Marc Gasch - who was in town for the Tour de France anyway - was at the ready to do a photo and video shoot of the bikes.
And they're off
Now that Victoire and Eleonore have finally embarked on their journey, we hope to keep you up to date on their progress here on the blog. Below you will find some nice photos of their bikes and their first days in Alaska, as well as a video where they introduce their project. You can find a full gallery and the spec list in the Bike Of The Month listing.
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