International Friends of the Ardeche Cycling Team

Aim

Help us to race in the 2016 Tour Cycliste Feminin International de l'Ardeche

We need your help!

We are 6 elite female cyclists from around Europe and North America and we have fallen in love with a race in France, the Tour Cycliste Feminin International de l’Ardeche (www.tcfia.org). Unfortuntely our respective teams are not racing this year, but we have joined forces to form our own team for a week: The International Friends of the Ardeche!


Who are we:

We are Alice Cobb (GBR), Alison Jackson (Canada), Anna Kiesenhofer (Austria), Gaby Shaw (GBR) Jennifer Tetrick (USA) and Leah Thomas (USA). We have each raced hard for our teams all season and with great success. We have won stages in Women’s World Tour Races, stood on the podium of our National Women’s Cycling series and stood on the podium at National Championships this year alone.  Unfortunately racing around the world is not cheap, so teams have to make tough choice which races to attend. However the opportunity to be a part of historic moment in women’s cycling is too good a chance to miss.

About the race:

the Tour Cycliste Feminin International de l’Ardeche is one of the longest running professional women’s cycling races which this year will be run for the fourteenth time. The race is traditionally run in the Ardeche region in the South West of France. However in the last few years the race has ventured out in to neighbouring regions. This year will mark a monumental moment as for the first time in about 20 years a women’s cycling race will tackle Mont Ventoux (and for your information, we are planning to ride to the top, unlike the Tour de France this year), if that alone is not enough, we have 35,000 feet of height to conquer over the 7 stages.

How you can help:

Like we said before, unfortunately our teams, for various reasons, will not be able to race this year, so we have decided to self fund our way to the race. Any help you can give us will be much appreciated. We have a group of friends and family who will come out to help us, but there are many more things required to actually get us there.

Our North American friends need to fly to Europe. Any Airline Miles you can donate will be much appreciated for this (please get in touch with one of us if you can help with this).

On top of that we will need around £3000/€3500/$4000 in order to race. With this money we will pay for the following:

Transport to and from the stages

Jerseys (as we are racing as a team we need some matching jerseys)

Food

Accommodation

Mechanic and Physio

We appreciate every Pound or Penny, Dollar or Dime you can spare us, as it is one thing less that we will have to pay for ourselves. If you cannot help directly, we would appreciate your help by sharing this with anyone you think could assist in our efforts.

This project successfully funded on 18th August 2016