Leuven Trapt & The UCI World Cycling Championships : Breaking World Records for Diversity
In September 2021, Leuven was the epicentre of the cycling world when the city hosted and sponsored the UCI World Cycling Championships, an event which attracted 1.5 million spectators.
Leuven is a multi-cultural city. 170 different nationalities live, work and study in Leuven. In the run-up to the World cycling championships, the city wanted to highlight this diversity in a sporting and unifying way because these different nationalities are an enormous wealth and strength for the city. Leuven’s diversity policy is built on the foundation that in Leuven it is your future that counts, not your origins.
Therefore, on September 12, 2021, we attacked the Guinness World Record “The most nationalities in a static bike cycling relay”. To beat the previous record we needed more than 68 people with a different nationality.
The record was broken! Under the approving eye of Mayor Ridouani and the bailiff, 89 enthusiastic people of different nationalities broke the record while riding 1 kilometer on a static bike.
To reach those different nationalities we worked together closely with the Diversity Office of Leuven. Via mailings, posters, social media, street teams and flyers we were able to reach our target groups and smash the previous record.
Mohamed Ridouani the Mayor of Leuven said: “It’s wonderful of course if you can not only break the world record but smash it. I can say it makes us very happy, the fact that people from so many background came together to help us break the record makes us very proud”
Until today our record still stands!
