Mark Colbourne, who has represented both his native Wales and the UK at the highest levels of parasport competitions and was appointed a Member of the British Empire in 2013 for his services to cycling, told The Portugal News on Monday that the Algarve “ticks all the boxes” of his plan to launch overseas cycling camps.
During the camps the Welshman and his team of expereinced collaborators aim to teach cycling enthusiasts – “casual club cyclists” – over the age of 18, the “marginal gains” of cycling, covering topics such as pedal efficiency, diet plans nutrition, the bio-mechanics of safer cycling, and being comfortable in the saddle for long periods of time.
“Most people can cycle, the question is can they cycle better? Can they cycle safer?” Mark explains.
A number of participants have already signed up for the week-long Global Cycling Camps, which are due to start in April.
After announcing his retirement from the Great Britain paracycling team in August 2012, Mark says “I genuinely had a feeling that I wanted to teach others the skills that I had learned at a world class level.”
At the suggestion of a friend he visited the Algarve to see if it fitted with his detailed business plan for the structured camps.
“Originally I looked at Majorca as I had spent a number of months there training with British Cycling,” he says, elaborating: “Majorca’s a great place to train; it’s been the Mecca of cycling for probably the past ten years now. However, looking at the road structure in the Algarve, from Aljezur all the way down to Sagres and all the way across to Vilamoura, the road infrastructure is very, very good and over the last four or five days that I’ve been here I’ve been very, very impressed.”
From a cycling perspective, he says, the Algarve “seems to have everything I was looking for in the business plan”, including year-round accessibility, “almost perfect weather” off-season and quiet roads.
The sportsman added that for now he has “completely shelved the idea of Majorca” because he feels “there’s a big opportunity here in the Algarve.”
“Everything on the business plan we feel we’ve found in the Algarve with almost five-stars. It’s been a great find.”
Initially the camps will see groups of between 10 and 20 cycling enthusiasts fly out to southern Portugal but, Colbourne explains, in a few years that number could be “built up to between 40 to 50 people per week.”
The Global Cycling Camps are, by the medallist’s own admission, “a brand new start” after the glory of London 2012.
Mark made the incredible journey from a tragic paragliding accident in 2009 that saw him break a vertebra in his back and left him with life-changing injuries, to the top-spot on the London 2012 podium, in just three years.
Twelve months of intensive physiotherapy restored his ability to walk despite still suffering from lower-leg paralysis.
Just one year after his accident Mark took part in a charity cycle ride to raise funds for the Wales Air Ambulance service, which helped him on the day of his accident.
It was a chance comment from a fellow participant that placed the London Paralympics firmly on his horizon.
Over the next eighteen months Mark trained tirelessly and notched up results that surpassed the “tight criteria” to make it into British Cycling, culminating in his participation in the London Paralympics in the summer of 2012, where he won Gold and two Silvers.
“I never thought for one moment when I left hospital that I would actually be standing on the podium in London, in a Home Games, in front of family and the whole of the United Kingdom. To stand there with a gold medal round my neck was quite a surreal feeling really.”
And even though the MBE was “not on my vision board” it was the icing on the cake.
But, Mark says, “It comes to show that, as far as I’m concerned, life is all about ability and not disability. You should never let anything stand in your way to prove to yourself that you can achieve great things and at the same time help other people to achieve their goals.”
In related news, at the start of this week, coincidentally, the RTA Algarve regional tourism board announced it is looking to “reaffirm” itself as a top destination for leisure and competition cycling.
The objective, the board said in a statement, is to attract more two-wheel competitions, events and tourists to the Algarve, which could become a “natural sporty destination for cyclists in the coming years.”
“The temperate climate, the quality of hotels on offer and the variety of routes and facilities available make the Algarve an attractive destination for sport. We are, for example, on the warm-up route of high competition football, which in 2014 brought the national teams of England and the Netherlands to the region. But we also want to make our mark on cycling,” said Desidério Silva, the president of the RTA.
The RTA is a partner in the Cyclin’Portugal Algarve programme, which hosts cycling events in February and March.
Silva elaborates: “The events included in Cyclin’Portugal Algarve take place in February and March at a time of low tourist flow. This therefore is a niche that is in our interest to explore (…) which in 2012 alone generated more than two million trips in Europe.”
The Algarve is part of the EuroVelo European transna-tional cycling network and has infrastructures specifically for cycling, such as the Ecovia coastal road, which runs 214 kilometres along the coast connecting Cape St. Vincent in Sagres to Vila Real de Santo António.
For those reasons and others, the head of the RTA concludes: “The Algarve is currently an excellent destination for outdoor activities, such as cycling and cyclotourism, which, given their importance, are already included in the Strategic Marketing Plan for Algarve Tourism.”
For more on Global Cycling Camps see: www.globalcycling camps.com or follow on twitter: @cyclingcamps.
Former Team GB Paralympic gold medallist to bring cycling camps to Algarve
in Algarve · 13 Feb 2015 · 1 Comments
Well, Portugal has a hell of a lot of work to do on the bike paths and making roads safer.
Plus, many drivers see cyclists as noting more than an obstruction to be passed with inches to spare!
By Joe from UK on 13 Feb 2015, 10:46