Sport. The Bikingman extreme cycling race blown away by these Savoyards in Portugal

They are four Savoyard friends, from Tresserve, Viviers-du-Lac, La Biolle and La Rochette, and on their bikes, they explore their limits.

At the beginning of October, Stéphane Chabanne, Sébastien Martinet, Jonathan Pallud and Alban Turgis took part in the Bikingman, an ultra-distance cycling race in Portugal. 1,000 km to complete, including 12,000 meters of elevation gain, in less than 120 hours, without any assistance on the roads of southern Portugal, in the Algarve, from Faro.

Not only the Savoyards managed to complete the race on time, but they are three, out of 117 competitors, coming from all over Europe, Japan and Canada, to rank in the top 20.

Alban Turgis, in fact, achieved a superb fifth place in 46:10. Stéphane Chabanne, for his part, finished fourteenth in 55:33, Jonathan Pallud nineteenth in 60:10 and Sébastien Martinet finished fifty-fifty. fifth in 83:19.

An ability to overcome hazards

To be able to meet this extraordinary challenge, Jonathan Pallud explains: “Behind all this, there are hours of preparation, unfailing support from our loved ones, but above all an iron mind, an ability to overcome fatigue, pain, bad weather, hazards. « He continues: » You have to find the perfect alchemy between the weight of the bike and the comfort of the road. « 

It must be said that the four Savoyards are regulars … They already have on their hunting boards many other crazy bike races: the Bi-crazy of Ventoux, Toqués du Col de Porte, the Seven major (360 km, seven passes of the Franco-Italian Alps at an altitude of more than 2,000 meters and 10,000 meters of elevation gain) and Paris-Brest-Paris.

No doubt they are already preparing for other challenges.