photo of Jure Robič after winning the 2007 RAAM by Kayvz from Wikipedia english

The niche sport of ultra cycling has lost an icon, and tragically the Robič family has lost a second son in the same year.

Reports came out over the weekend that Jure Robič was killed when he collided head-on with a vehicle while on a training ride near his home in Slovenia.

My only experience of cycling in Slovenia was this summer on our company’s Amber Route cycling expedition. We found the back roads, like those Jure died on, to be lightly trafficked, and beautiful. Slovenian drivers seemed, for the most part, to be accepting of cyclists and a little less aggressive then their neighbours in Italy. From the limited information that has come out so far, it seems as though it was simply tragic timing that Robič and the driver met at the bend in the road as they did.

Flickr photo by ts32raam

Jure is best known in North America as the 5-time champion of the grueling Race Across America – a non-stop race where top athlete’s sleep sometimes as little as one hour a day as they cycle day and night across the USA.

As part of the crew for a two-man team in 2007 I never had the pleasure to meet Jure Robič. But even then, he was the man to talk about at RAAM. A legend in the sport before I had even heard his name. He was the symbol of a sport that very few people even knew existed.

But the double tragedy of the passing of Jure was that on August 7 of this year his brother Sašo Robič also died. Sašo, a ski coach and accomplished alpine skier, reportedly jumped to his death from the Peračica viaduct also in Slovenia.

It is a great loss to their family and to the unique world of ultra athletics, and to Slovenia’s sporting world. Jure Robič and Sašo Robič will be missed by many.

Below, I have put a few links to the stories that I have come across regarding these events.

That Which Doesnt Kill Me Makes Me Stranger – A 2006 profile of Jure Robič by New York Times reporter Daniel Coyle

24ur News Site -  Slovenian news story on Jure Robič death. You can see by the number of comments (876 at time of writing), that he was certainly a well known sportsman in Slovenia. (or read the poorly translated Google vers.)

Slovenian Blog discussing the double tragedy of the deaths of brothers Sašo and Jure Robič translated with Google.

RAAM Winner Jure Robic Dies in Traffic Accident – Velo News

Jure Robic killed in Road Accident – Bike Radar

Ultracyclist Jure Robic Dies in Collision with Car – Outside Magazine blog

One rider on Twitter said it was ‘the hardest day of my life so far’ while another described it as the ‘biggest EFI massacre ever.’ (EFI? That’s Every Fucking Inch of the Tour d’Afrique without ever riding the support truck.)

It was an epic epic day… actually, from what I am told it was two giant days of riding in the untested roads approaching and inside Dinder National Park – a new route for us at Tour d’Afrique. These will surely be rides that live deep in the hearts of many riders, and surely for others it was simply two soul shattering, frustrating days.

I am in Khartoum tending to a rider who is on the mend from an earlier fall. The first reports I am getting from the tour suggests that it is an extraordinary and doable route, but it will need another day of riding to make it manageable for next year’s group.

As with years past, it has been our style to test new routes… enroute. We did it in Namibia last year and Ethiopia the previous year… both to great success, but not without hardship for the riders and long days for the staff. The cyclists do become part of our navigational experiments and our forays into lesser known, rarely traveled places. 

They don’t all thank us for it.

And, no doubt, we can appreciate why. For many these two days meant the end to their dream of riding EFI, and for others it was a shock to their system that they had not been eased into gently at all. This is the risk we run, and this is the style we like.

To all those cyclists enroute, you have many challenges ahead. But you are all graduates of Dinder National Park school of pain and we salute you for traveling this road with us…

A version of this post can also be found on Tour d’Afrique’s website.

I have mentioned to several riders on this tour that ‘back in my day’ (3 years ago) when I was in Sudan for the first time with Tour d’Afrique, the week of riding from Wadi Halfa to Dongola was one of the toughest on the entire tour.

Now with the completion of a paved road it is a whole new place. It wasn’t long ago that our schedule included five cycling days to get us from Wadi Halfa to Dongola. The days in the heat, sand, and corrugation were grueling but ever so serene in the evenings. The Nubian Desert then felt like a new world – uncharted territory to all of us.

Today, it still retains much of that serenity. And I must admit, as I cycled a relatively easy 150 km to our desert camp two days ago, I deeply enjoyed being able to cover such distances with the old sandy and bumpy road snaking back and forth underneath the groomed, and raised roadbed of this tarmac beauty.

On the old road the daily distances were as low as 70 or 80 km on some of the toughest days. And you never really got the same distance reading as the other riders in the group, because we all rode different tracks that spread like fingers through the desert – some a little longer and tougher than others – and most ending at our Nile campsites.

The road has changed a lot of things for the people in these regions. Some of the small villages that happened to be situated next to the new road will likely be benefiting from increased traffic and opportunity for income – selling drinks, snacks, and other essentials to the truckers, bus passengers, and tourists that pass through.

Though it is a shame now that some villages along the Nile, where the paved road no longer wanders, will likely see a sharp decrease in the traffic (not that there was much before).

There was also something to be said for arriving to a small village of just a handful of families by dirt road, and to cycle through and meet the people. The paved road allows us to pass more quickly to our destinations further along, but what time we gain, we perhaps have lost in the opportunity to have a true chance to interact with the people in these villages.

Unlike the heavy hand of the Sudanese government, regular Sudanese people are some of the friendliest of any place I have travelled. It is one of the few places where I feel as though I am treated as any other citizen on the street is treated, no worse and no better. This allows me to feel at ease, and able to explore and interact more freely.

From an organizational standpoint on the Tour d’Afrique, we have generally decided that with every kilometer of pavement that’s added to our route, we seek to return again to the days of dirt, and so we constantly explore new ways to challenge our clients after they have had the pleasure of riding such a comfortable stretch between Wadi and Dongola.

Our new route south of Khartoum promises a real off-road adventure, exploring a new ‘uncharted’ place, and hopefully having a better chance yet again to slow the pace down and interact with the Sudanese people we pass.

Dinder National Park… here we come! (stay tuned for a report from the new route in Dinder Park coming soon)

Some pictures from the past week…

Cyclists arrive to our desert lunch stop

Village scene in the midday heat

Poster of Sudanese President Bashir President Omar al-Bashir at roadside snack shop

In each country along our route on the Tour d’Afrique we have the pleasure of getting local cyclists join us to ride the portion of the tour that passes through their country.

Some of them are very skilled – completing for and winning stages. Some of them, on the other hand, are not as skilled or fit, and almost all of them lack access to replacement parts, cycling clothing, or tools. Their bikes, as a result, are often aging relics, with resourceful repair work – house clamps holding things together, handmade aero-style racing bars, faded and stretched cycling attire salvaged from who knows where.

Here in Egypt this year (as in many years past) we are joined by some top notch cyclists. They really love the Tour d’Afrique.

Pictured above, from left to right, they are Mohamed Gamal, Ashraf, Sharrif, Mohamed Kamel, and Mohsen. What they would love more than anything is to participate in the entire tour – not just cycling through their own country.

I know that because of the speed at which our cycling expedition moves, because of the language barriers, because of cultural differences, and because of the need to focus on the group as a whole – we often miss out. We miss the opportunity to really engage with our local cyclists. Their time on tour with us is relatively short.

Hopefully someday soon we will be able to find a way to have them as part of the group for the whole tour. It is after all a cycling tour through Africa, and having Africans in our group can only be a positive thing.

Here are a couple more photos from the last few days.

Lunch along the Nile on the way to Idfu.

Ali posing in front of a rail car full of sugar cane.

I am here in Egypt with Tour d’Afrique. Tonight we are in Safaga on the Red Sea. The first four days of riding are behind us and they have been challenging ones indeed.

The tour staff and myself spent several frantic days in Cairo preparing for the big start of the 2010 Tour d’Afrique. I am here to oversee the start of this year’s tour and to help out with any and all of the day-to-day tasks.

We had long lists of things to buy and meeting agendas to prepare. Shopping for small yet important things in a giant chaotic city like Cairo can be a challenge. I took four hours one day to find 70m of string and an adjustable wrench.

I went from Walmart-style Carrefour shopping complex to the down and dirty streets markets of one of Cairo’s many neighbourhoods.

Since Cairo, the tour has gone relatively smoothly. We headed into the desert and towards the Red Sea. We had a torrential downpour on day two (first such rains in 14 years I heard our local staff saying) that left my tent drenched. Day three was better weather but my body was sore from the last few days of riding.

The police in Egypt are both a help and a hindrance. They are essentially with us every moment from the time we leave our hotel in Cairo to the moment we board the ferry to exit Egypt five days from now.

I discussed this issue at length with Mahmood, one of these police officers who was with us at our camp on day 3. He said that the officers are told to protect us. Their bosses cannot risk any tourists in Egypt being harmed and the reputation of Egypt being a safe tourist destination might be severely damaged if this were to happen.

Without the police, we would simply not be able to pass through Egypt as we do, and so they are to some degree a necessecity and an integral part of the journey.

But when it comes to the low level officers tasked to protect us, some of them really seem to hate it and they also don’t know exactly how or what they are supposed to be doing to help protect us – this almost always leads to confusion, disruption of our route, and constant hassles to make them understnad what our schedule is and how important it is that we keep to it.

Example – after the hard rain the night before, day 3 began with our officers telling us that we were not allowed to continue along the road as the water had flooded the roads they had been given instuctions to stay where we were indefinitely. This is, of course, not possible. We worked on a tight schedule, having made arrangements with police and local couterparts months in advance.

Unfortuantely this meant giving the police an ultimatum – they had 10 minutes to speak with there superiors and then we would proceed as we had planned. So 10 minutes passed and we were on our way and there flooding concerns were unfounded.

I later explained this scenario to Mahmood, and I asked him “what other options did I have?” he replied that the officers in the camp had no choice but to follow orders and I had no choice but to simply carrying on as per our schedule – its a bit of an awkward situation really.

On a positive note, I intend to send a letter to the Cairo police responsible for our convoy out of the city. They did an excellent job and keep all our cyclists safe and happy. Every intersection the entire 40 km of our convoy had an officer stopping traffic for us, and 3 – 5 police cars at any given time were encircling our group, protecting us from the busy morning traffic on the ring road.

Signing off from Egypt, my next update with be from somewhere in Sudan.

In 2016, the summer Olympics will make their first ever stop on the South American continent when Rio de Janeiro becomes the host city. As with cities of games past, the spotlight will begin to shine on the areas where the hosts are not doing enough to manage the games ethically. The pollution blanketing Beijing before and during the 2008 games, and the costly mishandling of ‘Canada’s worst slum’ in Vancouver’s downtown east side in the lead up to next year’s winter Olympics are two recent examples.

Dona Marta, where this YouTube video was shot, is one of many favelas in Rio de Janeiro. A favela is essentially a slum or shanty town, and like many other cities in Brazil, and throughout the world, Rio has an increasingly large percentage of their population living in these impromptu, clustered neighbourhoods.

This photo was taken by exfordy from Corcovado Hill, presumably while standing next to Christ the Redeemer statue as He gazes down at Dona Marta and central Rio beyond it

Some of the common problems found in many slums around the world are overcrowding, lack sanitation, limited water and electricity, crime, and drugs. This is a problem that isn’t improving. The UN Habitat Agencies 2009 Global Report on Human Settlements states that over half of the world’s population now live in an urban setting, with one billion of them living in slums.

Though one could argue that a common thread between many of the world’s slums seems to be the strength of its people. These communities contribute a great deal to defining the culture of a city as a whole. At least one resident living next to Favela Dona Marta, has taken the time to write his praises of this neighbourhood. And Projects like this Judo and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu sports academy in Dona Marta add to the quality of life for the children of the favela – perhaps propelling some of them on to future Olympic appearances.

The urban downhill video has been viewed more than 660,000 times since being posted in October by event organizer Redbull. As a geared-up and sponsor-clad downhill mountain bike racer rips through narrow corridors, rolls across a church roof and drops into the Dona Marta alleyway below, one might ask, is this exploitation of an impoverished neighbourhood?

Perhaps it is, but as the bike racer, Gee Atherton, states in an interview on Redbull’s website…

The crowds were awesome and were so excitable – it was a real party atmosphere…I was nervous coming into this. I’d heard a lot about the favela, but once we walked the course and saw how friendly everyone was and how pleased they were, I changed my mind.

His experience in the favelas changed his perception of the place. So how will the favelas be dealt with in the lead up to the Olympics? Urban downhill is definitely no Olympic sport, and venues for the Olympic events most certainly won’t involve Favela Dona Marta, but how will these troubled, yet vibrant places be included or marginalized?

Taiwan

I don’t really know what to feel now. It has been a few days now since the BIG finish in Beijing, and I am already in Taiwan starting a week away with some of my closest friends from high school. Nice way to end the trip I think.

I think mostly what I feel right now is fatique and relief.

Lanzhou, China

So today I got up at 7am, and was essentially moving at a jogging pace the rest of the day it felt like – visa extensions, emails to send, staff to meet, logistical issues to resolve for the days to come, phone calls, phone calls, phone calls, and some 20 or 30 SMS conversations, lunch, taxi rides across downtown, maps, route planning, paying for hotels, arguing over hotel rates, and hotel rules, to the bank, and back to the hotel, and then questions questions questions from riders when I thought I was far enough away from the hotel that they would not find me – and then…. a great dinner this evening and a couple beers and wow, I feel human again.

Lanzhou has been a REAL pleasant surprise. It is huge, and amazingly polluted, crazy crazy traffic, endless loud car horns, but once you get downtown – into the inner circle, it seems a little less crazy the horns and bustle is still there, but the pollution isn’t as apparent and what’s left in its place are LOTS of amazing restaurants and a city with a bit of an international flair and urban colour.

Tonight we ate at the night market – a dark corridor, lit up only with spotlights over the food ready to be sampled – chicken feet and chicken everything, beef, lamb, noodles, pastries, dumplings, soups, and lots more. So we stopped at a shop, bought some beers and wandered the dark market drinking our beer as we made our final decisions on what to eat – but of course we couldn’t choose just one option. We found a table and each chose a few items from the various options along the corridor and brought it all together at our table. Some of it was great – some of it I wouldn’t have again, but it was a great night and a great end to a busy day.

So it’s something like 3 weeks left, and I am definitely in count down mode now. The riders petty complaints are getting to me easier and my patience is growing thinner – but as tonight’s dinner shows – I am still enjoying myself in those brief moments when it all comes together and I am reminded of how lucky I am to be doing what I do, and experience all that I have so far…

Xinjiang Autonomous Region, China

We are now traveling in between the Qilian Mountain range to the right and then more mountains and desert to our left – known as the Hexi Corridor. The mountains are very impressive when seen from the flat desert roads were traveling along.

The roads are getting increasingly crazy – local traffic on scooters, bikes, dump trucks, three-wheel cars, horse and donkey and camel carts cut you off, and keep you on edge and no one EVER uses their rear view mirrors and ignore the honking horns of other vehicles.

One of our riders was cut off by a big truck coming into town today and ended up under the truck which had stopped just as it had crushed his back pack and just before doing much more serious damage to him. He has some cracked bones in his wrist from the fall but generally ok. These are some of the stresses that keep me on my toes. I do worry as we go further east and the population and traffic increase.

We are in the town of Wuwei where we have another day off – man this trip is getting too soft. The riders are getting more rest days than we had originally told them, but I guess it is nice for all of us to stop for a moment. Moving everyday does wear on you after a while.

Last night we stayed in what might be our last camp – the rest will likely be hotels. And strangely our last one turned out to be a cemetery.

I had driven ahead in the morning to find a camp with our translator and driver. We found what looked like a suitable spot – just off our road, but far enough away from the traffic that it was peaceful. Nobody around and a pleasant setting on the hillside overlooking the road, with some odd piles of dirt scattered over the landscape.

I didn’t think much of the piles of dirt until later in the day when some locals told us where we were, but we tried to be as respectful as we could at this point and none of the Chinese with us, or that came by the camp seemed to mind where we had set up camp.

Tomorrow we continue on – over a 2900m pass to Tianzhou (where snow was reported a few days ago), Lanzhou, Xian, and Beijing in a couple weeks!!! I am starting to look to the end – a dangerous thing to do too early probably.

For a country I couldnt’ have picked out on a map six months ago, it is now a place I will never forget.

The cycling has been challenging (crossing 3600 m by bike in a snow storm!), the scenery is spectactular (41% of KG is above 3000 m), our local support has been great, the people are great and its generally an easy place to travel around – but the best part is that I got to leave the group,and  the cyclists for 10 days!!!

I fly to China tomorrow to rejoin the group, but it sure has been nice to have a break from them. I stayed back in Kyrgyzstan while they crossed into China to scout out some other mountain biking routes in the country. It was an awesome time, seeing some of the most isolated parts of the country on some very treacherous roads.

With this break I am ready to take on the final month or two til the end – I hope.