A few days ago was held the Oakley Gran Fondo Barcelona, one of most popular cycle tourist race of Barcelona, for their characteristics (140km and 1,600m+) and for their attractive routes (with traffic closed) combining large areas of coastline, mountain,  vineyards and charming places as the Pantà de Foix, situated in the region of Penedès.

Another point that differentiates this race to many others is its non-competitive approach and promoting amateurs riders and everybody with a minimum preparation, willingness and who wants to enjoy a great day of cycling.

Races with dimensions as the GF Barcelona often require a high degree of demand at the organizational level so that everything goes perfectly and, for all we know, in this case they made a big effort to achieve this goal. Also it is important to note the participation of major brands such as Oakley in support of events in this category are betting on amateur sport and that, possibly, without them would not be possible.

The day of the race we could see thousands of participants gathered in a place legendary for cycling such as Montjuïc, prepared, motivated and ready to give it all along the route.

An improvement that we would like to propose to the organizers, not only for the GF BCN, but all races like this, would be the possibility to find a way that would offer different modes of registration and that allowed more people to participate in them.

Gran Fondo World Tour

While it is a non-competitive race, it had a scoring timed stretch to the Gran Fondo World Tour. The winners (Josep Oriola and Laura Monegal) got a registration for the next race of the Series, the Marcialonga Cycling Craft, and all expenses paid.