Freeride Partners With Rouvy On Groundbreaking Virtual Race Series
Freeride has partnered with leading indoor training platform Rouvy on a series of virtual races featuring leading pro riders and many of the world’s best cycling teams.
Brief
Deploying its innovative augmented reality technology giving cyclists the ability to ride real-life roads virtually using an indoor trainer, Rouvy held two series of races to keep cyclists engaged with the calendar of professional races on hold during the COVID-19 crisis.
The first - the ‘Real Spring Classics’ - was held over 5 stages from 23-31 March. The second - the ‘Digital Swiss 5’ - was a virtual version of the Tour de Suisse, one of the most popular stage-races on the pro cycling calendar, with many of the world’s leading cycling teams - including Ineos, Trek-Segafredo and Deceuninck-Quickstep - taking part. The Digital Swiss 5 was the first time a pro cycling race had been staged virtually.
Held in partnership with Velon and Skoda, among others, the event was held from 22-26 April and consisted of five pro races broadcast across the world with the likes of the BBC, SBS Australia and Germany’s ZDF. Each pro race was followed by a fan race giving amateur cyclists from across the world the chance to ride and race the same roads as the pros earlier in the day.
Freeride partnered with Rouvy on both series of races to livestream, commentate and broadcast the fan races across our network of social channels.
What We Did
Commentator Keira McVitty interviewing Christian Schrot of Bora-Hansgrohe during Stage 5 of the Digital Swiss 5
Administering the project entirely remotely given the lockdown restrictions in place, we engaged leading cycling influencer Keira McVitty and her pro cyclist partner Jacob Hennessy to provide live commentary on the races, including live interviews with riders taking part from across the world and team principals and sports directors from pro teams - including Deceuninck–Quick-Step’s Zdeněk Štybar, Oliver Cookson of Team Ineos and Christian Schrot of Bora-Hansgrohe. For the Real Spring Classcis series, we also engaged several of the UK’s most popular cycling influencers to take part and share the experience with their audiences on social media.
The freeride team developed and produced a portfolio of social-first content to promote each series and the races, including content designed to give cyclists more information about Rouvy and to encourage signups to the platform. The team also developed all in-broadcast graphics and transitions using during the races.
Each race was live-streamed and broadcast on our social brand Cycling Pulse’s Facebook page (420,000 followers), Instagram account (170,000 followers) and YouTube channel (28,000 subscribers). Each livestream was produced and directed by our specialist video team at freeride to give viewers the best experience possible, providing a rich blend of race action, insight and interviews.