5,000 km across Europe comes with its fair share of ultra cycling prowess, rulebook drama and unfailing courage.
courtesy Transcontinental Race
French 23-year-old Victor Bosoni became the youngest-ever winner of the 2025 Transcontinental Race after completing the 5,000 km route across Europe in 10 days 16 hours and 38 minutes.
Having set off from Santiago de Compostela on the Galician coast at the north-western tip of Spain, Bosoni was the fastest of the 394 riders who headed west across the Pyrenees, then the Alps, down through Italy, and across the Balkans to the Romanian coastal city of Constanța on the Black Sea.
Riders roll out (Photo: Tomas Montes)
German Martin Moritz was second across the line a little over seven hours later, with the pair destined to battle it out ever since making it onto the same ferry crossing from Bari on Italy’s Adriatic coast across to Albania.
Before that pivotal moment in the race, Nicolas Chatelet had been first to the fourth of five checkpoints before the finish line (entrants can largely select their own routes, but there are mandatory segments around the checkpoints, called parcours, that competitors must ride), before finally succumbing to exhaustion, bedding down for a well-deserved but race-hindering 14-hour sleep. Similarly, veteran Christopher Strasser, back-to-back winner in 2022 and 2023, had worked backwards from making the Sunday evening ferry as part of his pacing strategy and was bewildered by the infernal start to the race by his competitors, but had to redraft his plans to account for diminishing energy levels.
Riders strewn across Europe competing in TCR’s 11th edition.
Instead, Moritz arrived at the port first, but his exhaustion lead to doubts over whether he could continue. With the ferry’s check-in closed by 23:00, and Bosoni still 15 minutes away, the young rider had to not take no for an answer when faced with the bureaucracy of the ticket office.
Bosoni fights the tyranny of “Is not possible” at the ticket office. (Photo: Tomas Montes)
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