Coverage: Etape Suisse in the Times
“The ride itself is a peach…the Swiss Alps are jaw-dropping”
That’s the view of Gary Parkinson from The Times, who came on our press trip to test ride the Etape Suisse route and offer. Read the full article here.
Robert Simpson is an unusual creature: an entrepreneurial accountant.
The former KPMG beancounter is also the founder and driving force behind what can
probably claim to the be the world’s most upmarket cycling sportive.
If the Etape Suisse, whose inaugural edition will run over three days from
September 5th, were a suit, it would be Savile Row bespoke. Consciously so.
“Ordinarily, sportives aren’t good enough,” he says. “With the more established
European events, you spend three days away from home to do one day’s ride. You stay
in some sh*tty three-star hotel. You don’t eat the food. You go out, the restaurants are
packed. It doesn’t work.
“You then ride a route that’s often not the most beautiful. It’s designed to be right for
the professionals the following day, not for you. It all adds up cashwise, but the quality of
the accommodation, the food and the ride is not as good as it should be.”
The Etape Suisse, then, is going for high-end all the way, promising the kind of service
and quality that Simpson’s old chums in the City might expect back home. It’s even
based in Davos, the Swiss ski resort best known for hosting the World Economic
Forum, where the suits from high finance and politics hunker down for a few days to
decide how to run the world for another year.
Riders choose from three packages: gold for £1,400 a pop, platinum at £1,700 and
diamond (prices on application).
For that, they’ll get three nights in 4 or 5-star star hotel in Davos (brekky included),
transfers from and to Zurich airport, a “festival of cycling”, when Switzerland’s Bicycle
Manufacturing Company – that’s BMC to you, the sponsor of the ProTeam of Cadel
Evans, the winner of the 2011 Tour de France – brings the weight of its marketing
machine to town for the day, a pre-ride party, a post-ride charity dinner, a personalised
jersey to wear on the ride and the ride itself.
And the ride itself is a peach. For anyone who has never been to Switzerland, it’s
disquietingly picturesque, unnervingly clean and unsettlingly neat. Coming into land
over Zurich, there’s a perfect image of a pen-knife mowed carefully into one of the
fields below. That doesn’t happen at Gatwick.
For anyone who has never seen the Swiss Alps, they are jaw-dropping. For anyone
familiar with both the country and its mountains, seeing them up close and personal on
a bike may offer a fresh perspective.
The Etape Suisse comes in three sizes to suit differing abilities (or ambitions). The full
150-kilometre “Endurance Challenge” brings 2,900 vertical metres of climbing. The
mid-distance of 120 kilometres rises 2,700 metres, and the shorter 80-kilometre route
climbs 1,500 metres.
The longer two rides take in two passes, the Albula and Fluela. The shortest, aimed at
riders who fancy a more relaxed day against a beautiful backdrop, just the Albula.
“Just” the Albula. It may not be the steepest pass in the Alps – the average gradient is 7
per cent, the maximum 12 per cent – but it’s long. Some 31 kilometres long. Now, if
you’ve never ridden in the mountains before, going uphill for getting on for two hours
solid is hard graft. No freewheeling, no let up, nowhere to hide. It’s a grind.
If the climb is constant, the scenery shifts spectacularly from the Albula’s wooded
lower slopes to its austere, snow-topped summit 2,315 metres above. Crowded about by
other Alpine crags, it’s seriously stunning.
What goes up, must come down. If you’ve never climbed an Alp, you won’t have ripped
down the other side of one either. Fantastic fun, and as sober or as hairy as you want it
to be.
Next up, the Fluela is shorter at 13.5 kilometres, but steeper. Some of the ramps on the
early part of the climb from the town of Susch are punchy. Further up, it also has a fair
few false summits. You think you’re there, but you’re not. When the summit does
eventually arrive at 2,383 metres, it’s as spectacular as the Albula. Off the other side of
the Fluela, it’s a short roll back into Davos.
Don’t be too intimidated. The Etape Suisse isn’t aimed exclusively at cycling’s superskinny
Lycra-clad hardcore. According to its organisers, its twin founding principles
are service (the foodstops are catered by the Michelin-starred chef Mosimann’s. No,
really) and inclusiveness.
“Riders only get so many three or four-day passes to do these kind of things,” Simpson
says. “My idea was to create something that didn’t use one of those passes because you
bring your family along. Where there was something for them, too. Where the nonrider
didn’t in any way feel short-changed.
“The success of the whole event rests more with the non-riders than riders.”
On the ride, then, electric bikes will be on hand for non-riders who might want to take
part, ride the passes, drink in the scenery. Riders who blow up but want to keep going
can hop on one, too. Non-cyclists can be transported to meet cyclists for a three-course
lunch mid-way round the ride, if that suits.
Off the bike, Simpson says, there will be music, parties and comedy as well as the shops
of Davos, tourist attractions and stuff for the kids, too.
The Etape Suisse isn’t overtly corporate, but it can cater for that market. It’s likely to
appeal to City folk who are less bothered about what they pay, provided the service is
right.
They were also the obvious people for Simpson to tap for cash to get the project off the
ground. Simpson set up Etape Suisse as a limited company, then approached potential
investors. A dozen or so friends of friends working at City institutions such as
JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank, as well as the odd Harley Street surgeon, put up
£10,000 each.
“Once we had an event, it was a question of how we were going to pay for it. I wanted
enough money to put the whole event on, no matter how many people turn up. You
can’t bring quality in at the end, you have to plan it from the start. I wanted everything
to be the best.”
Because these investments were neatly structured by the former accountant under the
Government’s Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme, backers get back half their money
in income tax relief, a further 28 per cent in capital gains tax relief and, if the whole
thing fails, a further 25 per cent income tax relief.
Professional cycling’s best-known women’s team – run by Rochelle Gilmore, the
Australian former Commonwealth Games Road Race Champion and including such
well-known British riders as Laura Trott, Dani King and Jo Rowsell – were brought on
board for the Etape Suisse dry run in June. Unfortunately, race commitments mean the
Wiggles can’t make the main event.
For all the new ground the Etape Suisse is trying to break, it’s the old ground it lacks. It
can’t offer the history or tradition of the long-established Continental sportives, such as
the Etape du Tour or La Marmotte. Its climbs are not Mont Ventoux, the Col du
Galibier, or Alpe d’Huez, icons etched deeply in cycling’s folklore. For some purists,
that will always be a problem. So, too, will be electric bikes alongside road bikes in a
sportive for the first time.
Though the Etape Suisse won’t be for everyone, it’s a relaxed, if pricey, way to sneak in
one last great ride at the end of the season without torching another of those precious
passes. On y va?
Book online at www.EtapeSuisse.com
Gary’s trip was provided by Swiss Tourism (www.MySwitzerland.com) and Davos
Klosters Tourism (www.davos.ch). Flights were provided by SWISS
(www.swiss.com), which operates more than 190 weekly flights to Switzerland from
London Heathrow, London City, Manchester, Birmingham and Dublin. Train travel
was by www.swisstravelsystem.co.uk, offering a range of travel passes and tickets
exclusively to overseas visitors.
