Australian riders that entered the FebFifteen Strava Challenge had all of their hours for the week of February 24 to March 2 added together into one pool. And for riders not in Australia, their hours went towards the Rest of the World team.
You might think the Rest of the World would have a considerable advantage, given the number of people in Australia compared with elsewhere around the globe, but the late-summer weather here in Australia (in Melbourne anyway) has been terrific and there’s been little excuse not to ride. Plus pride was on the line after the Rest of the World gave us Aussies a resounding smack last year.
After three days of this year’s FebFifteen Australia was actually in the lead and it looked like we might have been in for an upset. But sadly for us Australians things went downhill from there.
The final tally shows Australia with a total of 14,720 hours ridden in a week while the Rest of the World managed a total of 20,935. As you can see from the graph to the right, that 58.7% of the hours ridden that came from the Rest of the World, while Australia accounted for 41.3%.
While that might sound like a comfortable victory, it’s actually a considerable turnaround from last year’s FebFifteen. In that week the Rest of the World dominated, racking up more than 70% of all hours. So well done to the Aussies for making up some ground.
As you might expect, the number of riders from the Rest of the World exceeded those from Australia — roughly 2,200 to 1,500 — but when you break it down to the number of hours done per rider things get much closer. On average the Rest of the World riders contributed 9 hours 40 minutes to the total, while Australian riders were just behind with 9 hours 38 minutes.
This is particularly interesting when you consider that in last year’s challenge the average Australian entrant only managed 4 hours 8 minutes while the average Rest of the World rider managed 5 hours 11 minutes. Perhaps after the experience of last year a lot of riders were more realistic about their ability to ride 15 hours in a week and decided not to enter. Or maybe everyone that took part really stepped up this year. Either way, it’s a great effort.
Speaking of great efforts, kudos should go to the gentleman who racked up the most number of hours in total for the week. His name is Osvaldo Nunes, he lives in Brazil and he managed an incredible 46 hours in a week. In that time he put in six rides, one of which was an epic 18-hour, 400km ride around the streets of Brasilia.
Singaporean Wilson Toh also managed more than 40 hours for the week, while another 19 riders managed to clock up an impressive 30 hours or more. More than 100 more riders pushed behind the 15-hour goal and finished the week with 20 hours or more. Chapeau to you all! And Chapeau to Matt Opie who was the leading Australian rider for the competition with 32 hours in five rides.
Well done to everyone that took on the challenge and congratulations to those of you who managed to log 15 hours or more of riding. You can check out the full leaderboard here.
And so the CyclingTips FebFifteen Strava Challenge is done for another year. It was great to see Australia offer a bit of fight this time around and if the trend continues we might well see the tables turned next year. In the meantime, thanks to everyone that shared photos from their rides on Instagram and Twitter. You can see a small selection of our favourite images in the gallery below.
