If you slip down the website for the Cape Town Cycle Tour, past the announcement of the new shorter route and the click-through for entries to the longer, traditional 109km route, you will find perhaps the most important, and, one suspects, least read part of the site.
It is headlined, simply: “Where The Money Goes.” Where does the money raised by the Cycle Tour go? I’m glad you asked. “Every cent of the proceeds from the Cape Town Cycle Tour, and its sub-events, is channelled back into the communities that host the event.
“Through the Pedal Power Association [PPA] and the Rotary Club of Claremont, nearly R50m has been redistributed across the Cape Peninsula in the last five years.
“The PPA focuses primarily on cycling development projects and improving road safety for all cyclists, while Claremont Rotary’s drive is into numerous social upliftment projects that improve the lives of those in need in local communities.”
Just below that is a link to a video that explains where the money goes. Just 1,800 have watched it on YouTube since it was put up three years ago, before the pandemic changed everything. That in itself is an indictment of the tens of thousands who have ridden this grand event.
The money goes to early childhood development centres in Masiphumelele, the Ukhanyo Chess Club, Grabouw Beautiful Cycling Club and the Songezo Cycling Academy in Masiphumelele, among a host of others. It goes to the poor and needy, to the children who need a start or a change in life, to babies in the formative time of their lives, to teenagers one easy step away from following a path that goes nowhere good.
It goes to help and lift, to educate and build. It goes to buying bicycles, providing helmets and lights for commuters riding in the wee hours through the dark of the Western Cape to get to work.
The Cycle Tour is a fund-raising vehicle for the Cape Town Cycle Tour Trust, a partnership between Rotary and the PPA. It is not a commercial, for-profit event, but it is, as it must be and has been for many years, a professionally and expertly run and managed tour of the Western Cape.
It is a race that has to use funds to ensure the safety of all riding — that entails 41 dedicated vehicles, 18 motorbikes, 230 traffic officials, 40 metro police, 182 police officers, 25 doctors, 64 nurses, 124 first aiders, 65 ambulances, 9 medical motorbikes and one medical helicopter.
That does not come cheap. It takes an enormous amount of work and financial resources to produce this magnificent day out. The cost of putting an athlete on the road at a race is often more than the entry fee, with sponsorship making up the difference, as at the Comrades.
Just before the pandemic, the Comrades entry fee was R600, but cost just more than R1,300 for each runner. It is a race with something for everyone, which is why the organisers announced a 42km shorter route for the 2023 event to give those new to the sport an entry point to the sport and the event. It hasn’t pleased everyone.
The organisers have been accused of just wanting to “make money”, that the shorter route will dilute the prestige of the event (you don’t have a shorter Comrades, was one retort) and, as one social media happy person wrote, this is the beginning of the end of the race.
The answers to those claims are, yes, they do want to make money. That’s called fund-raising. The Cycle Tour lost significant money over the pandemic and ran at a loss over the past few years. That hit the work Rotary and the PPA do. They need to bring more riders into the sport and thus the tour.
And, well, the Two Oceans did okay when it introduced the half marathon alongside the 56km, to such an extent that it is usually the first of its quiver of races to be sold out.
I feel for those who say they can no longer afford to ride the Cycle Tour. Many have struggled financially during the pandemic and many of them love the Cycle Tour. The race needs to innovate to survive and adapt to the challenges of the times in which we live.
Why is the entry fee a little higher now? Why is there a shorter route? For the babies of Masiphumelele, the Ukhanyo Chess Club, the Grabouw Beautiful Cycling Club and the Songezo Cycling Academy. It is for those who need it the most.
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