{"id":622531,"date":"2026-06-05T11:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T11:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/622531\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T11:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T11:13:09","slug":"firm-creates-custom-bike-for-jill-scott-sport-relief-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/622531\/","title":{"rendered":"Firm creates custom bike for Jill Scott Sport Relief challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott starts her journey on Monday, riding the Mercian bicycle on a 112\u2011mile (180 km) route from Wembley Stadium to Villa Park, before tackling another 99\u2011mile ride to Everton’s Hill Dickinson Stadium.<\/p>\n

She will then take on a 38-mile (61 km) run to Manchester before a Tour de France-style 111-mile (178 km) cycle to the North East on day four.<\/p>\n

The challenge will end on 12 June with a 28-mile (45 km) marathon finish to the Stadium of Light.<\/p>\n

Mercian Cycles, which has been making bikes since 1946 and was rescued from liquidation in 2024<\/a>, has supplied a smaller spare Ventura Allroad bike for the challenge, which is a model first built by the firm in 1952.<\/p>\n

Bob Smith, a mechanic at Mercian, said it was “great” the firm was building another bike for a celebrity fundraiser, after the success of Greg James’ recent challenge.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s down to Greg. The people who organised the rides were blown away by the bike and how Greg got on with [it],” said Smith.<\/p>\n

“They must have thought, if they were doing another one, they would contact us again.”<\/p>\n

Smith, who hasn’t met Scott in person yet, said the former footballer was “professional”.<\/p>\n

“All the dealings we have done with Jill have been great. She’s a professional, she knows what needs to be done and she gets on with it,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scott starts her journey on Monday, riding the Mercian bicycle on a 112\u2011mile (180 km) route from Wembley…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-622531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}