In the last week of March a series of events took place in Peru, the goal was to promote artistic cycling and find committed trainers and athletes from the country.
Gracia Sotomayor, who participated for the very first time last year in the UCI Indoor Cycling World Championship in Stuttgart, established contact with the Peruvian cycling Federation to ask for support in the promotion of this sport in her country.
There was a complete preparation for this event: ICWW sent 5 bikes to Peru; Gracia traveled in the company of Angelika Wirth, trainer in Schopheim; a website was created to inform and sign up the interested people; The Peruvian federation put in disposition a sports hall for the training and posted about the events, stationary support for the bike was made and some unicycles were brought from Germany to support the trainings. There were 5 dates with open training for kids from 10 years old and young adults. Each date hosted around 15 participants of different ages, mostly urban cyclists who already like to try tricks on their bikes. The events consisted of a brief explanation of the sport, warming up, basic figures, and an explanation for the trainers on how to support correctly the athletes. During this week, the events took some notice making it even to the national TV news.
On the last day of the training, Angelika and Gracia could perform during the track cycling final. By the end of these events Leonard Carrizal, a physical education teacher in Lima, became the first trainer of artistic cycling for Perú, and Koko Nazario, a former circus artist became the mechanic and main athlete for the Peruvian team.
They are training twice a week in the national sports hall. Angelika and Gracia exchange pictures and videos with them and have regular calls to help them to develop as much as they can in this sport. The speed at which they are learning is unbelievable and it seems that they are going on the way to participate next year in the UCI Cycling world Championship that will take place in Glasgow, Scottland.