After one month of intense cycling battle, the competition is finally over. It’s now time to stop pedalling and check the final scoreboard for the participants of the fifth edition of the European Cycling Challenge 2016. And the winner is...

The ECC2016 is a urban cyclists’ team annual competition among European cities, which took place from 1 to 31 May 2016. Which city is then crowned winner? Simple, the one that “rides” the longest total distance on two wheels! The challenge is open every year to all people living in participating cities, or travelling to/from/across those cities for work, study or other reasons. The mileage of bicycle journeys was calculated through the free smartphone App Cycling365.

All journeys made by bicycle instead of other means of transportation (such as car, motorcycle or any engine powered vehicles) were accepted. The challenge aimed to enhance cycling participation by sparkling the competition among rivalling cities, from their way to work to just biking for leisure during the weekends. The participation for all the cities team’s member was free of charge.

The ECF is glad to have the chance to give you the first results of this year edition. First of all, the competition was a huge success in terms of general participation. In fact, 52 cities, and a total of 46.000 participants took part in the race, for a total of more than 4 million km cycled, beating the previous editions records.

The challenge was won by the city of Gdansk with about 825,550 km tracked. The Polish city was not only already the winner of the previous edition, but additionally it arrived first also in the Best Cycling Leaderboard with more than 1,700 km per 1,000 inhabitants. Congratulation to the Polish city for this astonishing success!

Moreover, among the other cities that took part in the challenge, three cities stood out as members of our Cities for Cyclists network: Nantes, Basel and Reggio Emilia. The purpose of “Cities for Cyclists” is to establish a global ECF network of cities which are working to promote bicycle use in urban areas and encourage the exchange of knowledge. Let’s have a look at their results.

Nantes Métropole was probably the best one. In 2015 they cycled only 16.000 km, but they joined the Challenge late this year and they were busy with the previous edition of the Velo-City Conference organization. This year they did a great promotional campaign and they collected 110.000 km.

Reggio Emilia doubled the mileage of the past edition: from 10.000 km in 2015, to 20.000 km this year. Excellent result for the Italian team!

Basel was at its first participation. The city administration therefore promoted the event at local level with a dedicated campaign. Despite the “small” geographical size of the city, in the Best Cycling city Leaderboard (km/inhabitants) they scored a respectable and promising 145 km.

Congratulations to all the cities! Although the challenge is over, never stop cycling!