You can view photos from every day of the event on our flickr page:
Hi All, I’m going to take over from Daley for today’s blog post.
You may have realised that I am cycling with Daley on every leg of the route. I’m doing this for two reasons:
1) To support Daley, who is a friend and fellow Laureus World Sports Academy member
2) To see what I can take back to Argentina from the projects we visit on the way. The Fundación Laureus Argentina is very close to my heart and we deal with similar problems of youth crime and gang violence.
This morning we spent an hour at the Mathieson Youth Centre in Milton Keynes. The boys got stuck in to Daley’s cycle challenge and the girls treated us all to some cheerleading – it was a great way to start the day. I also had a chat with a rugby-loving member of the local police force. The Mayor of Milton Keynes then waved off Daley, me and 12 other cycling enthusaists and project supporters as we set off towards Oxford. Read more
As you’ll see, Streetgames is a wonderful project and the visit was an uplifting experience for everyone involved.
Enjoy…
After yesterday’s ride we went to Stoke-on-Trent’s young persons community project, Streetgames. There were loads of really enthusiastic kids, all doing their best to beat me on the cycle challenge (this involves two laps of a circuit on a static bike). I’m afraid to say that two or three of them did get the better of me and I was given a lot of stick. It was a great project and really backed up what has been written in the report, Laureus: Breaking the Cycle of Violence - Click here to read it.
I’m also delighted that Jed Mason, who joined us on yesterday’s leg, presented a cheque for £1000 to the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation. He has also pledged a further £1000 on completion of the ride, which is extremely generous and has given me even more motivation (not that I needed any!).
Today we had an even tougher route over some pretty serious hills but I’m feeling good and slowly starting to get used to that saddle. Halfway through the ride we were joined by the Laureus Head of Communications, Mal Thompson (no relation!), but his timing couldn’t have been worse - he started at the bottom of a 2 mile hill. Mal dropped back about halfway up, leaving the rest of us to wait at the top with big grins on our faces. By the time he arrived we were bombarded with excuses about the saddle, gears, handlebars and all sorts of other strange problems. To give Mal some credit, he started to motor ahead after that but there’ll be a few charity fines for him this evening.
Later this afternoon we’re visiting the Sporting Futures project just outside Coventry.
