I am joining former England, Crystal Palace, Wolves and Nottingham Forest footballer, leukaemia survivor and Patron of blood cancer charity Cure Leukaemia Geoff Thomas MBE, to cycle the full Tour de France route one week ahead of the professionals. 

The Tour 21 will take place from Saturday June 19th - Sunday July 11th and we will tackle all 21 gruelling stages and 3,383km of the Tour de France 2021 route a week ahead of the professionals (exactly the same route as the pros).

As a team of 18 amateur cyclists, we are committed to raising £1,000,000 for the charity that helped save Geoff's life.  All funds raised from this event will be invested directly into the national Trials Acceleration Programme (TAP) network which Cure Leukaemia will begin funding from January 2020 allowing them to open and run clinical trials for pioneering treatments for the disease. Patients from an increased catchment area of over 20 million people will have access, as a result, to potentially life-saving treatments.

So many challenges have been thrown at the team, with COVID and the French rules threatening The Tour21 until a week ago.  On Friday 4 June we received the fantastic news that the Tour21 is proceeding.  Very sadly we lost 7 riders who were not fully vaccinated and therefore could not meet the entry requirements to France without quarantine, plus quarantine on the way back into England.  

We have all trained like we never have in our lives, but the challenge ahead is beyond what we can imagine.  We are very focussed on why we are doing this and are so looking forward to the challenge and delivering a wonderful result for Cure Leukaemia.