It has been over a week since the end of the Spirit of Belron challenge for 2021 and now that the muscles are recovering, we are celebrating the huge achievements of all who took part.
In Australia, 431 people took part in the challenge and contributed a whopping 10,468km to the total 167,090km travelled globally. That equates to more than 4 times circumnavigating the globe.
In addition to the physical part of the challenge, the business aims to raise money for our global charity partner Afrika Tikkun, a leading non-profit company in the fields of education, skills development and socio-economic upliftment in South Africa.
This year we successfully raised over 2.3M Euros for Afrika Tikkun with O'Brien Australia proudly contributing $90,000 to the effort!
In Australia, our outstanding participants were George Psarras, branch manager at the Traralgon branch who rode over 460kms and Emma Webb-Wagg who works in our Wagga Wagga branch who travelled 370km.
George, who is based in regional Victoria said being in lockdown and not being able to go anywhere gave him some extra time throughout the day to get on the exercise bike.
He would do 30-45 minute stints at a time and coordinate it with binging his favourite show on Netflix or watching AFL, NRL or Premier Football.
“Initially I said I would do 5km a day. But when time goes that quick you don’t realise you have done 50km just watching TV.”
Although George admits it’s taken him a week to recover, he said the challenge has got him in the zone.
“I’m not as fit as I should be and my wife has been exercising a lot recently, so I do need to step up and lose some kilos.”
George’s competitive spirit is what got him across the line as Australian who travelled the greatest distance.
“When it comes to sport things I can be really competitive. If there is a challenge there I will try and better that.”
Emma, who was in the same team as George, was the second-highest individual clocking 370km, also on an exercise bike.
This was her first time taking part and she said her motivation was to raise money for a worthy cause as well as get out of the house and get active after a long period of lockdown
She also credits her team for the added motivation to smash her targets.
“I would like to give a massive shout out to the Auto Champs Team – George Psarras, Phil Cole, Fawad Saleem, Anthony Lindsay and the ring leader Marcus Wood.
Their enthusiasm, dedication and encouragement was amazing and having such a supportive team was a huge boost for the motivation. If it wasn’t for the teamwork and 11 pm messages in the group chat, I wouldn’t have pushed myself as much. My success is theirs as well – ONE TEAM ONE DREAM.”
Great effort all!
