SAN FRANCISCO, California (May 31, 2023) — The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) is pleased to announce that it has partnered with Strava to launch a bike challenge called “Your Ride Counts” as part of its World Bicycle Day celebrations on 3 June.
The challenge will run from 3rd to 30th June and aims to encourage cyclists around the world to join the UCI in celebrating cycling both as a sport and as a means of transport, by using their bikes at least twice a week and opting for a bike instead of a motor vehicle for short journeys.
To participate in the UCI challenge “Your Ride Counts”, please visit the Strava website or the mobile app and click on “Join Challenge”.
Strava offers several types of challenges to motivate athletes to push themselves and achieve specific goals, both individual or as a collective. Challenges can last for one day, several days or for an entire month. They may target covering a certain distance, reaching a certain altitude difference, achieving a time target or staying active for a certain number of days.
This collaboration between the UCI and Strava is also part of the Strava Metro project. Strava has the largest volume of data on human-powered transport on the planet, and its Strava Metro project makes it easier for transport planners to identify specific needs for bike lanes and safe areas for active transport, while exploring local trends in activity. Strava offers public authorities and other actors engaged in active mobility free access to anonymised data on the journeys made by its users. The activities recorded during the UCI Strava challenge can therefore help to improve infrastructures for active mobility in participants’ cities and regions.
As part of the collaboration with the UCI, Strava will make such data available free of charge to cities and regions awarded the UCI Bike City label. This label supports and rewards cities and regions which not only host major UCI cycling events but also invest in developing community cycling and related infrastructure and programmes.
UCI President David Lappartient said: “The UCI is delighted about this first partnership with Strava, a major player that provides a key service for millions of active cyclists around the world, whether they use their bikes for sport or for active mobility. By launching a challenge on Strava for World Bicycle Day, the UCI aims to celebrate cycling and to encourage more people to use their bikes instead of motor vehicles for short journeys, and to help promote the Strava Metro project, which is an invaluable tool for the planning of cycling infrastructure.”
Brian Bell, Vice President of Global Communications and Social Impact at Strava said: “The way in which we commute to and from our various destinations has changed significantly in recent years. Strava is proud to be the platform to help local governments and city planners to improve cycling infrastructure in communities around the world by providing free, anonymised and aggregated data through Strava Metro. With the launch of the UCI’s World Bicycle Day challenge on Strava, we hope even more people around the world will be encouraged to celebrate the joy of cycling not just on one day, but all year.”
