Madras Randonneurs was founded by Partha Datta in the year 2011. This has been ranked as the 14th largest club in the world, conducting brevet in Chennai since year 2011 under ACP and AIR guidelines. The community have been constantly growing, and also proves that age or the gender is never the constraint for endurance cycling, rider from the age of 18 to 65 have been riding brevet successfully.
Today to honour all these great Randonneurs, Turyaa Chennai in association with Madras Randonneurs has arranged for an award function for about 250 riders and also going to launch their Jersey with the prominent guests like Mr. Ravi, IPS and Mr. Baskaran, Former Indian Hockey Coach.
Shanmuganathan who has been riding with Madras Randonneurs since year 2012 has completed 5 super Randonneurs series including “One Thousand KM Brevet” between Chennai and Vijayawada and back in 61 hours. He has been regularly commuting to his work, to help the environment and practice for the future ride. He is also aiming for RAAM in future.
Neville J Bilimoria is one of oldest rider of our club who have been riding since inspection of Madras Randonneurs which took off on 18th of Dec 2011. He has completed 5 super Randonneurs series, and also completed three “One Thousand KM” brevet since 2013. He was also one among the 5 riders from Chennai who has completed PBP in year 2015.
Sundararajan aged 67 has the distinction of being the oldest super Randonneurs in the country having the highest mileage he has completed a bouquet of 200km, 300km, 400km and 600km rides in a year. He started cycling at the age of 58. He was also one of the participants in Paris Brest Paris which was held in year 2015.
Randonneurs is beyond socio economic backgrounds and it provides a platform of brotherhood outgrowing all differences. And to prove it Gopinath and Srinivasan Ezhumalai made it come true by their level of dedication towards cycling. They have also participated in state level cycling and have finished “One Thousand KM Brevet” in a year.
Padma Priya a female Randonneurs popularly known as “Iron Lady of Madras Randonneurs” started her brevet from the year 2014 completing 5 super Randonneurs and she is the first female to complete “1000 km brevet” in year 2015. She has also been commuting to her work every day covering 50km as a training aiming the future Paris-Brest-Paris race in year 2019.
Paris–Brest–Paris (PBP) is a long-distance cycling event. It is a 1200km bicycle race from Paris to Brest and back to Paris. The starting point will be scheduled from national velodrome situated in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. It is one of the oldest bicycling events followed even today. And to make the club proud the top riders Ashwin, Baskar, Kaviarasu, Neville Bilimoria and Sathish are the first batch to participate in the PBP in 2011. Later Ashwin Govindaswamy had the credit of being the 2nd fastest Indian in PBP 2015 by clocking 1200 kms in 75.2 hours.
