This week, the Israel – Premier Tech cycling team unveiled a special edition kit for the Tour de France to launch its ambitious worldwide fundraising campaign to support the youth of Rwanda.
IPT is calling on cycling fans across the globe to donate and support its initiative to build a bike center, the “Field of Dreams”, with the team’s riders, owners, and staff leading the way.
Plans for the Field of Dreams bike center include a pump track, race track, and future cycling academy built on 16 acres of land deep in the Bugesera district of Rwanda. The completed complex will offer 120,000 students in the Bugesera district between the ages of six and 18 the opportunity to take up biking and to develop their skills, thrive, and achieve success through cycling.
The team describes this as the next giant leap of the Racing for Change project it launched last year when it “adopted” the only women’s cycling team in Rwanda and initiated a social riding program for kids in the district.
“As I’ve often expressed, Israel – Premier Tech is more than a cycling team,” said Israel – Premier Tech owner Sylvan Adams. “We follow the ancient Jewish imperative of ‘Tikkun Olam’, roughly translated as ‘improving our world’. As such, we look at this project as organic to our mission.
“We are hoping to engage the entire global cycling community to donate and help us build this necessary cycling infrastructure in Africa. What better way to unveil this ambitious campaign than at the most important event on our cycling calendar, the Tour de France where we can unite all cycling fans to get behind the wonderful Rwandan youth who deserve it so much.”
“We are hoping to engage the entire global cycling community to donate and help us build this necessary cycling infrastructure in Africa"
Sylvan Adams Israel – Premier Tech owner
“For me, growing up in Kenya, the bike was always about freedom,” added four-time Tour de France champion and IPT rider Chris Froome. “It was my way of getting around, my transport."
Biking - an opportunity to discover the word
"The bike was my opportunity to experience the world around me. We didn’t have pump tracks, velodromes, or anything like that. Growing up and experiencing cycling in that way, with no real infrastructure or support for youngsters growing up, has really made me want to get behind a project like this. One that is offering an opportunity like this to youngsters who are interested in cycling to be able to follow their dreams.”
Inspired by the Racing for Change project, the IPT Tour de France jersey, designed by Stijn Dossche (stycle.design), celebrates the colors of the rich soil and lush greenery that brightens the landscape of the “land of a thousand hills”, and features the Rwandan art form Imigongo as the hero of the jersey design.