July 29 – August 14
Departed from Italy on the 29th of July, Paolo, Alessandro and Arturo arrived in Moscow on the 14th of August, during the 17th and last stage of the RIDE TO MOSCOW cycling tour.
They left Mozhaysk in the morning – there they had been greeted with a very beautiful “party” – and cycled the last 170 km, supported by some members of the team and by a group of Russian cyclists who read about the project and decided to contribute by joining the team during this last stage.
Driven by emotion and enthusiasm, our cyclists first reached the Red Square, symbol of Moscow, and then continued toward Gorkij Park, where they met the whole team, Russian friends and volunteers, and journalists gathered for the occasion.
A very touching moment words cannot always describe. A mix of satisfaction and emotion, as Paolo Ferraris said “It is a dream come true…We kept moving forward, pushed by the confidence we were doing something good, overcoming even some difficult moments we inevitably had passed through. The arrival has been a great relief, the satisfaction of testing ourselves, aiming for a purpose which is much greater and important than our physical and mental effort”.
In fact, although the athletic part of RIDE TO MOSCOW is over, the charity project of helping orphan children, “A door for Life” fund, has just began.
The day after the arrival, Monday 15, an event was organized and on that occasion the whole team had the possibility to meet a group of young boys and girls living in an orphanage in Russia. It was an opportunity to lay the foundations for the “A door for Life” project and to start knowing the teenagers, to try to better understand what we could do to help them full respecting their personality. The work has just began.
