Since 2018, June 3 has been synonymous with United Nations World Bicycle Day, and the International Cyclist Union (UCI) and its World Cycling Center (WCC) are once again organizing numerous activities this year to celebrate this international day dedicated to cycling.
The UCI has joined forces with the three-time UCI Road Cycling World Champion (road race) Peter Sagan to launch a photo contest on Instagram on June 3. People around the world are invited to post a photo of themselves on their bike on World Bicycle Day (using #WorldBicycleDay and tagging UCI_cycling). The Slovak athlete will choose his favorite photo, and the winner will receive an exclusive UCI World Champion jersey signed by Sagan.
The former UCI WCC athlete Eyeru Tesfoam Gebru will participate in the celebrations organized in Aigle, Switzerland. The Ethiopian, who trained at the UCI WCC from 2017 to 2020, will compete in the road cycling event (road race) at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games as part of the International Olympic Committee Refugee Team ( IOC) and completed a leg of the Olympic torch relay last Thursday. For World Bicycle Day, she returns to her old training ground in Aigle, where she will take part in a lunchtime outing organized by the UCI for its staff, the media, local businesses and the general public. She will also donate a bicycle during a collection organized in partnership with Velafrica.
A poignant gift since she herself had received the bike from an association based in France, the ALC association – Agir pour le bond social et la citizenship, and used it with gratitude for a year before joining the French UCI Women’s Continental Team Team Komugi Grand Est (previously known as Team Grand Est-Komugi-La Fabrique).
After the used bike collection organized at the UCI CMC, the donated bicycles will be repaired and reconditioned before being distributed to communities in need, notably to children in refugee camps in Rwanda. This initiative coincides with the organization of the 2025 UCI Road World Championships to be held in the Rwandan capital of Kigali, which will be the first to be organized on the African continent. The public is invited to drop off their bikes at the UCI CMC in Aigle between 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. CET on Monday 3, Wednesday 5 and Friday 7 June.
The UCI has chosen World Bicycle Day to publish its “Ten steps to go to work by bike” (“Ten steps to bike to work”) which will encourage more people to use bicycles as a means of transport to work. From choosing the bike to choosing the route to ways to make the journey more fun, these tips and many more are available in this article in the “Biking for everyone” section of the UCI website .
Simultaneously, an event of theUCI Cycling Club, on Strava – the subscription-based connected fitness platform – invites all club members to post their World Bicycle Day rides, whether short or long, with the aim of covering as many collective miles as possible while throughout the day. We encourage you to join the event by clicking here.
Isabella Burczak, Cycling for All and Sustainability Manager of the UCI, takes part in the UNESCO round table entitled “The bicycle, driving force of the Sustainable Development Goals”, which takes place in Paris, France on June 3. Organized by the UNESCO Cycling for All working group and the UNESCO Secretariat, the roundtable brings together representatives from UNESCO and the bicycle industry as well as bicycle advocates. Isabella Burczak will be part of a panel that will discuss best practices for transforming infrastructure in cities and rural areas to encourage cycling as a catalyst for sustainable development.
Children were included in the World Bicycle Day celebrations at the UCI WCC with a series ofpump track initiations for local school students organized throughout the day.
