Meet the UAE cancer survivor cycling 3,333km across Europe for a mission

Dubai: Nine days into the ride, Guido De Wilde is taking a rest today somewhere between Spain and France, the first pause in a journey that has already raised Dh2,285,000 (around $622,000) for charity.

The 68-year-old stage 4 colon cancer survivor set off from Barcelona on July 1 with 14 other riders, aiming to cover 3,333 kilometres and more than 54,000 metres of climbing before reaching Paris, 25 days after they began.

It is not his first fundraising ride. It is, by a wide margin, his biggest.

Cycle Against Cancer, the team Guido founded, is riding in support of Al Jalila Foundation, the Dubai-based foundation behind cancer research and patient care programmes. Thirteen of the fifteen riders are based in the UAE, alongside two joining from abroad, and the team includes cancer survivors, business leaders and members of the UAE's cycling community, many riding in memory or honour of someone they have lost, or someone still fighting.

Before the team departed, His Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Dubai Health, met the riders in a show of support for the cause.

Guido's own diagnosis came during the Covid pandemic. Recovery, he says, was never something he did passively. "While I was going through six months of chemotherapy I was already training at home on a virtual cycling system, doing yoga three times a week, and working with a personal trainer I've trusted for seventeen years," he says.

In July 2021, he stepped away from his corporate career, though he resists the word retirement. "I repurposed my life," he says. Training for a 3,333 kilometre ride at 68, cancer and all, is his way of proving a point, to himself as much as anyone else. "It's also proof to myself, and hopefully to others, that a diagnosis doesn't have to be the end of an active life."

This is Guido's second major fundraising challenge, not his first. In May 2022, he rode solo from Brussels to Bergamo in Italy, a seven day, 1,200 kilometre trip that raised $100,000 (approx Dh367,250) for Al Jalila Foundation and effectively launched Cycle Against Cancer as an initiative. Four years on, that solo ride has grown into a 15 person team taking on nearly three times the distance.

Almost everyone on the team is riding for someone else too. "One of our riders is also a stage 4 cancer survivor. He battled bone cancer, and there's an unspoken understanding between us," Guido says. "Beyond that, almost everyone on this team is carrying someone with them, whether that be a family member they've lost or one who is currently going through treatment. That shared purpose is what makes this team different. Everybody understands why they're doing it."

He hopes the ride reaches further than the team itself. "I want them to feel that hope isn't just a word; it's something you can physically carry across a continent," he says. "My greatest wish is that the message we want to deliver reaches people who are getting a diagnosis, going through treatment, or even at the stage of recovery."

Long before any of this, Guido grew up cycling in the Flemish countryside of Belgium, where, he says, cycling is not really a pastime but a way of life. "I was raised in a family where the values were all about honesty, integrity, doing the right thing, keeping your promises and being kind to people. We weren't rich, but we were always taught to help others." He never imagined, growing up on a bike in Flanders, that it would one day carry him through stage 4 cancer. "But looking back, the discipline and the mindset were already being built."

Guido and the team are expected to reach Paris by the end of July.