Equipment Donation
Punta Brava Youth Cycling Club with Coach Nico and some of the 2020 Guajiro Cycling Tour group
Youth Cycling Support
We are unique. Our cycling tours support youth cycling programs throughout Cuba.
My roots in bike racing and desire to share my love of cycling are what sprouted the youth cycling support programs of Bicycle Breeze (formerly CanbiCuba). Since 2000, our cycling tours have been donating racing equipment to Cuban youth cycling teams ranging from the developmental level all the way up to teams that compete at the national leve
How it began
On my first trip to the east of Cuba in 2000, I met the EIDE (Escuela de Iniciación Deportiva Escolar) cycling group at the school in the city of Las Tunas. EIDE schools are sport schools. Students with athletic potential are accepted into these schools where they attend classes and focus on their sport. I saw what the coaches were up against: there are no bike shops in
Cuba thus no new equipment for racing cyclists. I gave them my Marinoni bike and so it began. As my cycling tours began to take off in popularity, I asked clients on each trip to help by bringing equipment to donate. New, slightly used, anything, but especially rubber. Everyone eagerly responded with donations of all kinds. Over the years, a best guess is that we have donated around 500 new bikes and mountains of equipment.
Now we help EIDE schools throughout Cuba, from Baracoa in the east to Pinar Del Rio in the west and many schools and developmental teams in between. We assist any school asking for support to the best of our ability.
Cycle racing teaches a youth discipline and life skills and can take these students to the provincial team and a chance to visit other provinces for competition. Then possibly they can move onto the national team and the opportunity to travel abroad. Your donations are giving these youngsters a chance to grow and prosper via a sport. Something that, without your help would never happen.
Baracoa Youth Team with Coach Hidalgo – they start out learning to ride on rollers
What you can do
When you join us on one of our tours, we will ask you to bring whatever you can to donate to these kids. For example, your old 700c x 23c or 25c tires might be worn out to you but are like gold here. Handlebars, stems, seats, cassettes and brakes are all very useful donations. Handlebar tape is an inexpensive, easy to pack gift that is often overlooked. If donating clothing, small and medium sizes are most useful. Entry level racing bikes, whether new or old, are always needed. Quite often, a rider on the tour will bring an old racing bike to leave with a club here in Cuba. Your tour leader may even ask if you would like to contribute $20 towards purchasing a new bike.
“It always amazes me that people in need of something can do so much with so little. They cherish every little thing and nothing goes to waste. In fact, most items have nine lives and are used again and again!” Bill Kiester, 2016 Fat Mary Tour
Punta Brava Youth Cycling Club with Coach Nico and some of the 2020 Guajiro Cycling Tour group
Donation at Velodromo
Gratitude
On our tours, we typically spend time with one of the youth teams that we support. When we meet the team, we not only have the chance to chat with the young athletes and their coaches and to donate much-needed equipment, we are often also able to enjoy sharing a meal with them. As an expression of their gratitude, they may even hop on their bikes and escort us out of town.
Lunch in Coach Nico’s garden 2016
Coach sending off our tour
Where to now?
We will continue to ask our clients to collect donations to sustain these teams. As more coaches and schools learn of our support, we will help them as much as possible. If We are aware of any special needs at any particular school we will inform a tour leader prior to a group departure.
What is an EIDE high school?
Escuela de Iniciación Deportiva Escolar, referred to by the acronym EIDE. These are sports oriented high schools that are attended by youths deemed to have a talent for a particular sporting activity. There is one EIDE in each province of Cuba. Not all EIDE cover cycling but you can bet Cuba’s top sports are in every provincial EIDE, such as boxing and baseball.
Driving around the vicinity of each school with a cycling squad, you might come across a group of young athletes being escorted by their gym teacher on a motorbike. What a great idea, sure beats vaulting a box or pommel horse. They do have gymnastics but don’t push it down the throats of those not inclined to vault and bounce around the gymnasium. As the great Fausto Coppi told us the best exercise for cycling, is cycling! Life is not all games at these EIDE institutions, a student must maintain passing grades in order to hold that prized place in the provincial EIDE. Let your marks slip and expect the boot. After all the state doesn’t want academic slackers representing it at the Olympic or Pan Am games.
No matter how far the youth lives from the school, they are taken care of by the state. If you live close enough to walk then do that, further way and you will be bused in daily. Beyond a bus ride there is a boarding school where you are fed and housed. Cycling can possibly be regarded as an elitist sport. In Cuba it definitely is that. Simply because even if your family had the money to purchase racing equipment, this would not be possible. There are bike shops in Cuba but these are rather rudimentary and cater to utilitarian sit up and beg roadsters. You know those Flying Pigeon bikes with rod brakes and roadster tires. You might see some low-end Shimano parts in a shop in Havana but high quality racing parts are out of the question. These are sometimes found in our Revolico (something akin to Kijiji).
These schools need your used parts! Can you imagine how difficult it must be for the coach to keep 20 kids in rubber? Sure we need your old racing bikes and you are sending them here for which we are very grateful. It is impossible to buy a 700x23c racing tire or inner tube, please consider bringing your used tires.
The list of our needs is extensive, from water bottles to the cages that hold them on the bike, handlebar tape, gear cables and brake cables, saddles, chains, and cassettes. If it goes on a racing bike we need it, not necessarily new, used will suffice. Send us your used spokes. Thanks so much for reading this begging letter.
Best regards, from Havana, Peter Marshall.
Want to know more?
1 - Taken from an article by New York journalist Lauren Matison February 29, 2016.
On our last day, Peter Marshall, a Canadian-turned-Cuban and the owner of cycling tour group CanBiCuba, led the way as we biked out of Havana to meet the youth racing club in Punta Brava. We rode by fields of cows and waved back at drivers in classic cars. At a beach bar made of wood and palm fronds, we sipped a cold Tu Kola and watched perfect sets of waves go to waste without surfers.
When we arrived at the club coach’s home, 10 beaming kids in their bike kits put heavy coconuts with colorful straws in our hands and showed us to a table filled with food: banana bread pudding, fried plantains, sandwiches with spicy tomato jam, and bowls of guava and papaya.
While cradling their new (our old) saddles, pedals, and shoes, the boys spoke of life on two wheels, how they train six days a week after school and aspire to become pro cyclists, regardless of the challenges they face. Listening to their stories as they held the recycled gear and grinned the widest grins, it occurred to me just how much this moment meant to the club. The donations and beat-up bicycles allowed them to escape everything else, if only for a little while. The kids hugged farewell and chased after our wheels, which kicked up mud on the fractured concrete alley. I was surprised by having to brush away tears, a salty mix of joy and guilt.
Back in Havana, I sat along the Malecón, washing down my Cuban sandwich from La Chucheria with a splash of Havana Club rum and pineapple and a whiff of exhaust from a pink ‘59 Buick Invicta. A fisherman in a makeshift Styrofoam boat floated through ripples of gold as the sun dipped below the sea. It was a perfect sendoff, but my mind had already left, drifting towards new plans to ship bike supplies to those kids with big dreams in Punta Brava.
2 - Peter’s video.
3 - Be like my friend LES.
Back in the early 70’s I met a guy from the Hamiton C.C. and we started doing bicycle tours when a race was cancelled, the tours were low keyed events and still run to this day. In 2006 we joined up again to do a tour in western Cuba and met a group of cyclists in Pinar del Rio, who were desperate to locate equipment that is impossible to get in Cuba, Les fixed a few bikes for them and a number of us left the bikes we had brought with us on our cycling holiday. I took up the idea of starting a cycle holiday event company. Les started gathering old bike parts and building bikes for further donation here in Cuba. I am not sure how many he has brought to Cuba but it is at least a yearly event and a very much appreciated effort.
Now with the world wide bike shortage, we are no longer able to purchase an entry level racing bike, which we have been doing directly from manufactures. Now we need more cyclists like Les to be like him. If you are coming to Cuba with one of our group tours please consider taking on as a project at home and with your club, assemble some used parts and a frame into a usable bike for a youth racing program here in Cuba. Bike racing on the school team builds character and responsible young people with ambition and a desire to make a good life for themselves and not be downtrodden by a life of poverty. Help these kids get into our wonderful sport. Possibly make it to Cuba’s national team and get to experience the Olympic Games and international events. Being a member of a cycling club was a huge thing for my life as a kid in England and to this day I remain a member of that very same Club.
Be like Les.
Les Humphreys
Donation bike
4 - Some stories that make us proud.
After 20 years of supporting youth cycling programs throughout Cuba, there are many stories of varying levels of success. Most recently, a 14-year-old youngster, Kevin, from one of our developmental teams showed so much promise he was sent to the velodrome team and shortly afterwards won the national junior pursuit championship. Next, he will be sent to represent Cuba at the Junior games in Columbia. He continues to show incredible potential.
Our adopted squad of juniors in Las Tunas has done us proud, not only growing in size but also producing national champions and setting some national records. Ranging in age from 12 to 17 years of age, these young athletes are thriving on our donated bikes and parts.
These dedicated coaches throughout Cuba have inspired their students for decades. Now they inspire us to continue to support them.
2020 Champs from Punta Brava
From left to right, Kevin's father, Kevin, Myself, Adonis (coach), Marcos (EIDE commissioner in Havana)
