Every bike has a story. This one is special.
This is one of six original Carocap edition Ultravox Ti frames painted specially for a world record attempt – the fastest human-powered crossing of the African continent. The endeavour was successful. Cairo to Cape Town: 10 600km in 38 days, 12 hours and 16 minutes, averaging 31km/h. But this particular frame didn’t ride a single metre of it.
The plan initially included six riders, SwiftCarbon founder Mark Blewett (South Africa), Nick Bourne (Great Britain), David Martin (Zimbabwe), David Kinjah (Kenya), Adham Mahmoud Abouelela (Egypt) and Timothy Rugg (United States). Unfortunately, Rugg was unable to start, relegating his frame to the back-up truck as a spare – when planning an African crossing on unknown roads using a lightweight road bike, you never know... As it turned out, Mark’s and the other riders' bikes (including the three Ultravoxes that completed the 10 660km, battling wind, rain, altitude, hostile locals and dreadful roads littered with rocks and potholes. The bikes finished as they started (barring 55 tyre changes), with only a few minor scrapes. It was the ultimate engineering field research test.
Today, with the original bikes hanging on each riders' respective walls, this spare was passed down to the staff member who travelled to meet the team in Kenya, hand delivering much appreciated provisions, such as new bibshorts, chamois cream and biltong (a South African dried meat delicacy).
To commemorate special achievement we made more UltraVox Ti Carocap special reissue frames, numbered 1 - 106 – one frame for every 100km ridden).
