I am joining former England, Crystal Palace, Wolves and Nottingham Forest footballer, leukaemia survivor and Patron of blood cancer charity Cure Leukaemia Geoff Thomas, to cycle the full Tour de France route one week ahead of the professionals in 2021.

As a life-long Crystal Palace fan, it is a genuine privilege and honour to be part of Geoff’s Tour 21 team - he is a genuine legend for Crystal Palace and is consistently recognised as our best ever player over the clubs 115 year history [- Google will say the same!].

The Tour 21 event will take place from June 19th to July 11th and we will take all 21 gruelling stages and 3,388km of the recently announced Le Tour 2021 route a week ahead of pro rider field.

As a team we are committed to raising £1,000,000 for the charity that helped save Geoff's life. All funds raised from this event will be invested directly into the national Trials Acceleration Programme (TAP) network which Cure Leukaemia will begin funding from January 2020 allowing them to open and run clinical trials for pioneering treatments for the disease. Patients from an increased catchment area of over 20 million people will have access, as a result, to potentially life-saving treatments.

Given the magnitude of the challenge, I am personally committing to raise £30,000. Typically I do not ask for sponsorship for my sporting challenges, although I hope you agree that this challenge is significant [or insane] enough to do this for more than personal reasons alone!

Any sponsorship contributions are gratefully received, and will very much help me get through the hours of pain to train and complete the challenge!

Riding the full Tour as part of a cycling team is a true bucket list item – I am a keen long distance triathlete, although cycling is actually my weakest discipline so this will be a material personal challenge! 

Kind regards & thank you!!

Matt