Day 10: Swansea to Hobart..the final leg
Well, this is it. It is Sunday 6th April, the final day. After many months of preparation, fundraising and training it finally comes down to the last day of the ‘Tour’. Everyone is looking forward to the feeling and sense of accomplishment at the end of today rolling into the steps of Parliament House in Hobart.
Willie has done a great job of keeping us all up to date with his daily highlights package. I wasn’t sure who Willie was until it was revealed at the Grand Finale Dinner on Sunday – he was the guy who would pop up everywhere wearing the flourescent orange full body lycra onesie. It all makes sense now. His last post is below…enjoy.
“Hello again, it’s Willie Maykit here and it is with an enormous sense of pride that I am writing my final report from the Tour de Cure’s Signature Tour 2014.
Firstly let’s roll back to Saturday night in Swansea. The community dinner was a cracker. The local community had really got behind TdC and were out in numbers. All the food that the chef from the local resort was preparing was donated (the oysters and abalone a real highlight!), we were in a huge marquee on the community oval and it was our last night out on the road. Tasmania have been so embracing of TdC and all our team could not be more appreciative.
Woody was the evening host and he was on a roll. We presented our cheque to the Cancer Council of Tasmania and we awarded our jerseys.
- Focus: Ian Bullimore
- Doer: Gary Bertwhistle
- Attitude: Gavin Hardy
- Awareness: James Tobin
- Guts: Gareth Jones
- Inspiration: Dennis Gentilin
The final highlight of a great evening was the announcement of the Team Time Trial results. Congratulations to team Lexus, a great win. All the teams loved the Team Time Trial and the banter around the results really highlighted this.
……and then alarm went at 5:45am…..the final day…..we’re going to Hobart…..the finish line….families, friends, accomplishment….
I have mixed emotions spinning in my head. My body wants this to end but my mind wants to stay in this bubble with these amazing people striving to make a difference.
The ride out of Swansea is stunning. We rode down the coast and the Sunrise team had organised a helicopter. This flies very low over us for about 20km taking footage for the documentary that Mark Beretta and his team are preparing. This will show on Channel 7 on New Year’s day and it’ll be brilliant.
After stopping at Triabunna where they were celebrating Seafest, we turned inland towards Hobart. This tour wouldn’t be complete without a couple more climbs. One climb was called Bust-Me-Gall and it nearly did bust me.
However, like so many previous days before, we dug, we coaxed each other, we remembered why we are ridding and we conquered it.
We regrouped not far out of Richmond and rode into Hobart as a single peloton under a full police escort. They held back the cars on the freeway and gave us a dedicated lane on the Tasman bridge. The emotions welled up as we rode over the bridge and Hobart came into view. Wow, I was here. We were here. As we rode past Constitution Dock the team was buzzing.
The final turn took us down to Salamanca Place and our finish at Tasmania’s Parliament House. Hundreds of people were waiting for us and the celebration was so heartfelt and emotional. We were hugging, cheering and crying. This has been so hard but so rewarding.
Tasmania’s new premier, Will Hodgman, welcomed us to the finish and it started to hit us all that we had made it. Our whole team was here.
There is a great quote by Margaret Mead that sums up this team…..
‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’
The cancer cure may take us some time, but this team of people are doing their bit to speed this up, support those who are suffering and educate our youth to be fit, be healthy and be happy. All your donations are making such a difference. We are still striving to raise more and achieve our goals.
And now to Sunday’s Grand Finale DInner!
Our final dinner in Hobart was awesome. We had it on the wharf and the convention centre was full to the brim with the team, families and supporters. Kevin and Dave were our hosts and they were in fine spirits. We made toasts, we heard from the TdC Board, we heard perspectives from riders and support crew and we reflected on an amazing tour. The brilliant photos our photographers have taken were showing on all the big screens and this helped us reflect and remember some special moments. It also was great to show our families and friends what we had been doing.
The highlight of the final night on tour is always the last jersey presentation. These are awarded to those who exhibit the important attributes for the whole duration of the tour and are our ultimate accolade…the most coveted being the award for Inspiriation – the Pink Jersey. There were so many deserving candidates across the 60 riders and 40 support crew. A tough decision for anyone to have to make but the winners were oh so deserving and chapeau to all of them:
- Doer: Owen Wright
- Attitude: Deb Russell
- Focus: Stuart Locke
- Guts: Renae McGarvie
- Awareness: Justin Pratt
- Inspiration: Daren Armstrong – his story is so amazing that the whole room stood and cheered as he received his award; not a dry eye in the house!
The formalities ended with a tour favourite moment, the Sunrise highlights. This was so cool we had to play it twice. Check it out!
https://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunrise/video/watch/22440219/highlights-of-tour-de-cure/
The memories will last a lifetime.
Willie Maykit
P.S. If you were wondering if Willie made it, yes he did!”
Well done Willie, kudos to you mate. A great job done capturing the key moments as they happened.
The final day was pretty special I have to say, despite having almost no sleep the night before in Swansea. When you put 4 sizeable blokes into small bunk beds in a small backpacker room, and 2 of those blokes snore, it’s nothing but pain. Anyway, Swansea to Triabunna was a fabulous ride – fast and fantastic views over the water, plus the addition of the helicopter flying around us for part of the way made for a unique experience. Riding into Hobart under police escort over the Tasman Bridge to the steps of Parliament House is something I’ll never forget – what a buzz. The highlight was seeing my family, what a moment!
Here’s some footage of us rolling into Parliament House… https://youtu.be/OSFQgKxGyXA
It has truly been a privilege riding with the Tour de Cure team, and a genuine honour to receive such recognition. Very surprising and very humbling.
And the final few items as always…
1. The daily stats
141km distance ridden: GRAND TOTAL = 1,632km,
1,385m of elevation climbed: GRAND TOTAL = 18,415m,
5hrs 12mins of riding: GRAND TOTAL = 57 hrs 02 mins,
and I had 0 punctures for the final day!
And a new stat…calories burned on the bike over the 10 days = 34,200. Normal daily intake should be around 2,500 calories without intensive exercise so a lot of food had to be consumed to keep energy levels up and prevent weight loss.
2. Photo gallery
The photo gallery grows with more great action snaps…
Day 1: https://www.tourdecure.com.au/pages/news/gallery/index/248
Day 2: https://www.tourdecure.com.au/pages/news/gallery/index/249
Day 3: https://www.tourdecure.com.au/pages/news/gallery/index/251
Day 4: https://www.tourdecure.com.au/pages/news/gallery/index/252
Day 5: https://www.tourdecure.com.au/pages/news/gallery/index/253
Day 6: https://www.tourdecure.com.au/pages/news/gallery/index/254
Day 7: https://www.tourdecure.com.au/pages/news/gallery/index/255
Day 8: https://www.tourdecure.com.au/pages/news/gallery/index/257
Day 9: https://www.tourdecure.com.au/pages/news/gallery/index/258
Day 10: https://www.tourdecure.com.au/pages/news/gallery/index/259
3. My Fundraising progress
My personal tally sits at $27,942 (up by more than $1,000 from Day 9 – thank you to those who donated in the past couple of days!). I’ve reset my target to $30,000 so if you think you know of someone who may be interested in helping please feel free to forward the blog link to them – it has the donate link included. Overall, $1.56m has been raised by our tour team so far, up from $1.46m yesterday.
And now I’d like to pause for a moment to recognise the most important element of this journey…YOU! Your support, emails, texts, posts, phone calls and donations have been incredible, and for that I thank you. It has indeed been a memorable and epic journey.
Until next year, bye for now.
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