In this year's CITY CYCLING, the 189 active cyclists in 19 teams covered a total of 42,188 kilometers for the city of Idar-Oberstein. "Although this is slightly less than last year, it is still a great success and I would like to thank all participants for their great commitment," explained Mayor Friedrich Marx at the award ceremony for special achievements as part of the campaign. The distance covered is 44 times the distance to Paris, where the Olympic Games are currently taking place.
For the fifth time, the city of Idar-Oberstein took part in the competition initiated by the Climate Alliance to promote cycling, climate protection and quality of life. During the three-week campaign period, the total mileage unfortunately did not quite reach the previous year's figure. Nevertheless, 189 active cyclists in 19 teams were very committed and cycled 42188 km.
Promoting cycling is one of the aims of the CITY CYCLING campaign. It is also about climate protection, because every journey made by bike instead of by car is good for the environment. "The kilometers cycled during our campaign saved around 7 tons of CO2," explained climate protection manager Julia Besand. She also gave some interesting details from the statistical analysis of the participants. The majority of cyclists were between 46 and 59 years old, with 80 of the 189 active participants in this age group. This year's campaign once again saw a number of company and administrative teams taking part.
This year, BioNTech was able to record the most kilometers for itself, with the 24 active cyclists riding a total of 7062.3 km, or 294 km per team member.
The achievements of the individuals, who were honored with a prize, were remarkable. The best individual cyclist with the most kilometers ridden by road bike or e-bike was Hartmut Fuchs from the "Open Team" with 1466.80 km. He was followed by Rabea Kluge from Team BioNTech with 1437.10 km and Tobias Buchen from the Fritsch Team and Stefan Hartmann from RSC-Blitz with exactly 1316.50 km each.
Stefan Fröhlich from the Fritsch Team won the 'normal' bike category, i.e. no racing bike or e-bike, with 749 kilometers. The best cyclist in the "young cyclists" category was Rasmus Loeblein from Team Kentix with 390.70 km. Elke Hochreiter from Team Klinikum cycled to work a total of 17 times, making her the winner in the 'commuting to work' category. Second and third place went to Dieter Meyer from the Open Team with 14 times and Roxana Belascu from the City Administration Team with 13 times. The youngest participant, Mina Sophie Becker from the Pfarracker team, received a prize, as did the oldest participant, Dieter Meyer from the Idar-Oberstein Open Team, aged 81. They all received either tickets for events, sights or Idar-Oberstein gift vouchers from Mayor Marx.
Finally, Julia Besand announced the campaign period for the coming year. The city of Idar-Oberstein will once again take part in CITY CYCLING from June 2 to June 22, 2025.