Welcome to our live blog to chart the progress of the #TeamTrhas project in London (England), on which we are working with the West London Welcome refugee center, and many of our friends and contacts in the cycling industry.
27 April: So here we are, the big unveil! We are happy to share that the UCI have agreed Trhas can train and race in their World Cycling Centre Team colours across 2024 again, after her time with the team back in 2020.
They have gone one step further and kindly supplied Trhas with a beautiful Scott Addict race bike, fully loaded with Shimano-Road#Di2, LOOK Cycle pedals, Vittoria tyres (and our long-term friends at Vittoria also upgraded them to the new Corsa Pro Graphene tyres!) as well as full WCC Team racing kit, helmet, glasses, shoes and spare wheels!
We are so happy for her! She then headed to our friend Spencer at Personal Bikefit for a fitting to get her position and shoes dialled-in, ahead of training and racing over the coming weeks. Many thanks indeed to everyone involved in this project so far, the cycling world has been simply fantastic. Lots more to come as she gets her legs and lungs back up to race pace!
24 April: Today was another ground-breaking moment in Trhas’ story. She was invited as a special guest to attend the members’ lunch of The Pedal Club. The Pedal Club was founded in 1941 in the UK by a group of cycling journalists and officials, wishing to meet and exchange diverse views. This wish resulted in the creation of a lively member monthly lunch. The objective, which still remains, is to meet informally to discuss cycling topics and for prominent public people and others to address The Club. The members were truly welcoming and moved by Trhas’ story. The other special guest for the lunch was none other than Jon Dutton, CEO of British Cycling, who was celebrating his one year anniversary in his role. Trhas was in esteemed company indeed. The members kindly held a collection to go towards Trhas’ fund and over £800 was raised! Trhas also received a Pedal Club race jersey, a rare and to be treasured gift, and a bag of high quality racing clothing was also donated to be given to a suitable Africa Rising project by one of the members. We truly thank all members of this group for their kindness, support and interest in her story. Trhas’ mentor Alice Lethbridge has also been a honourable guest at their members’ lunch, cycling truly is a small but hugely inclusive community.
23 April: Today was a big day: Tonight Trhas will take part in her first race here on British soil, a round of the Miche West Thames League circuit racing, organised by West Drayton MBC. She will be attending with her mentor Alice and we wish her safe passage and success as she gets back into competitive cycling. Our good friend Keith McRae (see below) will be attending the event also, and is kindly supplying her with some gels, bars and energy mix. Thank you Keith! Trhas was comfortable in the race and stayed with the group well until the last lap, when a big attack went and she didn’t have the energy to go again but finished the race. After seven months with no races, poor nutrition and not much competitive training, she has a way to go but was extremely happy and motivated to be back at a race!
22 April: We are most excited to hear from the leadership team at the Kingston Wheelers CC (KWCC) club (London, England), who have kindly agreed to grant Trhas membership of their illustrious club! KWCC are celebrating their 100th anniversary in 2024, one of the UK’s most well-known club groups, with many members. Trhas will race some of her forthcoming races on the KWCC club team.
21 April: Trhas attended the ‘Dave Peck Women’s Road Race’ in Virginia Water today, to watch and understand the type of racing available here in the UK, ahead of her debut racing there this week. This race is run by Twickenham CC, in memory of their former club chairman. At the race, Trhas met Simon Howes, the Team Principal of the DAS-hutchinson-Brother UK women’s continental cycling team, who recently kindly helped secure Trhas’ current road bike and equipment earlier in the year.
Trhas also met Alice Lethbridge who has now agreed to mentor her and they will begin racing together from this week. We are most excited to have Alice as part of Trhas’ support team in the UK. Alice is a hardcore cyclist with many records and achievements, including breaking – and subsequently extending – the 12-hour time trial record, formerly held by the legendary Beryl Burton and a record that had stood for 50 years! We hope she will help Trhas become the top cyclist of which she dreams of becoming.
20 April: After a great discussion with our long-term friend Keith McRae, the Head Sports Director of Team Global 6 United, last night, he introduces us to a very experienced UK female rider who is based near to Trhas’s hostel, and agrees to train with her, and take her to several races over the coming months. Trhas truly is now looking like having the support structure around her to train and develop properly! We cannot overstate how amazing the cycling community is being! More soon…
18 April: Our European representative heads to Switzerland for the day to meet with senior UCI officials at the World Cycling Centre to discuss Trhas’ situation, possible opportunities and help with equipment. All goes very well and significant plans are discussed and agreed. All to be revealed soon….
18 April: British Cycling contact us to confirm that Trhas’ race license has been approved. Due to her race history and results, she has been upgraded to a Category 3 license, allowing her to race any level in the UK. Plans are immediately put in place to identify and enter her in forthcoming races.
The BBC London piece also appears and is played all day across the BBC’s platforms. Full clip below:
16 April: The BBC London team head to Hammersmith to interview Trhas, as well as interviewing Team Africa Rising’s CEO (Kimberly Coats) for a major piece to be broadcast on 18 April, across their channels.
15 April: Andy Slaughter MP (Hammersmith, Labour) raises a question in the UK’s House of Commons about Trhas’ situation, and the poor food and conditions she is experiencing in the refugee hostel in which she is staying. The UK’s Home Secretary agrees to look into her case. You can watch the full question and answer HERE (go to 14:38:20)
12 April: We have been discussing Trhas’ situation with our long-term contacts at the UCI, in the World Cycling Centre team, with whom Trhas trained and raced successfully in 2020 in South Africa. They are open to discussing ways they can help, and happily supply her UCI race license details and additional information they have on file. We review her ProCyclingStats profile also, and verify this has all her historical race information. We hope to add some more results to this record in 2024…
10 April: Our UK representative opens discussions with British Cycling to discuss organising a race license for Trhas, to enable her to take part in competitions in the UK. Initial feedback is positive. We hope this will work out, as it will be a major step forward for her.
9 April: Zwift invite Trhas to visit their studio and get organised. We arrange her license and account, work with her to get her avatar how she would like it, and she tries a 40 minute FTP test for the first time. After 6 months of poor nutrition, inconsistent training, Trhas still bashes out a 3.8W/Kg session which all there feel is an excellent base level to work from. Getting her to pro level of 4.5-5.5W/Kg feels like it is eminently achievable with good training and, hopefully, racing soon. Kimberly (our CEO) is in touch with Kate Veronneau (Director of Women’s Strategy) on the project, and they are most pleased to be involved! (Update 18 April: Trhas has now completed three Zwift rides, is quickly getting to grips with the platform, and is really enjoying riding virtually.)
7 April: Journalists from various divisions of the BBC, and other media outlets globally, have been getting in touch with us due to the Guardian article. We set up an interview with BBC London, to meet Trhas, film her and talk about what she hopes will happen in the UK.
6 April: We get in touch with our brilliant friends at Zwift and they are keen to help Trhas get training and racing online. We agree that she can visit Zwift’s UK HQ during the week and use their cycling studio. This is hugely generous, and also gives Trhas access to fellow female riders to ride with at Zwift, and outside.
5 April: The public’s reaction to The Guardian piece has been overwhelming, and the crowdfunding account set up by WLW hits £3,500! This funding will be used to ensure Trhas has food, clothing, nutrition and for cycling related expenses. We have received many inbounds from enthusiastic folk offering help, funds and training buddies. Trhas also secures a Legal Aid lawyer from the law firm Wilson’s from the piece, a vital part of her UK asylum process. Things are looking up!
4 April: Trhas has been interviewed in the last couple of days by Diane Taylor of The Guardian about her situation, her hopes and dreams. The interview is then published today. Full article HERE
2 April: After discussions with Trhas about what she needs, we ordered a track pump, a mini-pump, tube repair kits, chain lube and tools, and a pile of inner tubes for her training bike, from our friends Park Tool and Vittoria respectively (via Madison, their UK distributor) to keep her training and riding going well. We start to reach out to our connections in cycling to see how we can help her. The team at the Ford RideLondon event have already kindly offered a free place in the Ford RideLondon-Essex 100, taking place on 26 May. This is one of the UK’s/London’s biggest cycling events, seeing many thousands of riders take on a car-free 100-mile route.
27 March 2024: Our Team Africa Rising (TAR) representative in Europe is contacted by a connection in the cycling industry, with whom the brilliant team at the West London Welcome (WLW) – a refugee centre in the west of London – had been in touch to try and secure some cycling equipment. Trhas had been coming to their centre for a few months and by chance someone who spoke Tigrinya had worked out that she was a cyclist, and on further discussion, found out she was the reigning national women’s road race, and ITT champion of Ethiopia! She has been working and training almost every day.
Previous to this, WLW had recently launched an (ongoing) fundraising campaign on localgiving with multiple donors, allowing them to purchase the Tifosi bicycle (and further equipment) which appears in the pictures above. The brilliant Spencer Wilson (Founder of the Personal Bike Fit store in Kensington) kindly fitted Trhas to this bike for free to enable her to train properly.
