There are endurance challenges, and then there are journeys shaped by something far more personal. Cycle Against Cancer sits firmly in the latter — a demanding 3,333-kilometre ride from Barcelona to Paris that is as much about purpose as it is about physical endurance.

At the centre of it is Guido De Wilde, a stage four cancer survivor who has turned his experience into action. After receiving life-saving treatment in Dubai, he set out to give back — not quietly, but through an initiative that raises both awareness and vital funds for the Al Jalila Foundation, supporting those who may not have access to the same care.

This July, joined by 12 other riders, Guido will take on a 25-day journey across Spain and France. But as he makes clear, the ride itself is only a means to an end — the real goal is to inspire hope, mobilise support, and remind people that even in the face of cancer, strength and solidarity remain.

— Can we start a bit with the introduction to the foundation and the whole idea in general, to explain to people what is going on?

— The Al Jalila Foundation is a very prominent foundation which was founded by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. I have been supporting the Al Jalila Foundation for probably the past bit over 10 years through various charity events, mainly cycling.

They do very impactful work in the areas of cancer research and cancer treatments, predominantly focusing on helping people who don’t have the means or don’t have access to the the medical care and cancer treatments they require.

There are still many people living in the UAE and beyond, who they will treat based on funds. So they purely depend on funds that are being raised by individuals, companies giving donations, and also people like me. There are many who organise charity events in support of the Al Jalila Foundation.

In my previous corporate life, I organised charity cycling events in the company. So if you had been working for Starwood, or later Marriott, you probably would have signed up.

It started in 2008, an initiative called Road to Awareness. We would go to the French Pyrenees or the Alps and do three-day cycling rides, raising funds through our properties across Europe, Africa and the Middle East, initially for UNICEF. Later on, all the funds raised in the UAE would go to Al Jalila Foundation. So in that sense, I have known them for quite some time.

At the end of my career, I was COO for Marriott Middle East, including Egypt and Turkey. When I retired in July 2021, about a year later, in May 2022, I organised a charity ride by myself, supported by some friends from Belgium who were riding with me. I rode 1,200 kilometres from Brussels — actually from Waterloo — to Bergamo, raising funds for the Al Jalila Foundation.

I named that initiative Cycle Against Cancer.

I was diagnosed with cancer about a year and a half before I retired. In January 2020, I had stage four cancer. I got the treatment and the care that I required here in Dubai. I was extremely well treated. And I would like to make a point of that, because the medical care I received was second to none. Excellent. Mediclinic City Hospital — second to none. Still today, because I am still being monitored every three months.

When I did that charity ride for Al Jalila, I raised $101,000 on my own. Then I promised Al Jalila, “I’m going to do this every year.” It was successful. I was very happy about it. And I said, “I’m going to do this every year.” But I didn’t keep my promise.

The reason I didn’t keep my promise was that in 2023, I started working full-time again. I thought I would never work full-time again, but I started again for Wasl Hospitality. It is a government organisation here in Dubai. We own 40 hotels, and they asked me to head up their asset management team.

Last year, 2025, about three years after my charity ride, I realised that I wasn’t doing the right thing. I was again focusing on work, not really paying attention to the things that I promised to do, which is about giving back.

I called a good friend of mine, Servee Palmans, and I said, “Servee, I have an idea. You’re going to call me crazy, but I think it’s something that we need to do. I haven’t kept my promise for the past three years. So now we need to do something out of the ordinary, something that not many people have done, but something that will allow me to go back to the Al Jalila Foundation and say, ‘Look, I promised this. I didn’t do it, but now I’m really going to do something that is significant and is going to make a real difference.’”

We decided to do a 22-day bike ride, and it will be from Barcelona to Paris, which would test even the best professionals in cycling. It is 3,333 kilometres, 54,450 metres of elevation, 22 days of cycling and three rest days. The total will be 25 days.

From the moment I made my commitment, there was no way back. Honestly, in our lives, it is easy to make a promise and then sometimes not make it. But I felt I needed to go back and deliver on it.

There are various phases in this entire journey, from where we are today to where we started. The first thing was coming to terms with whether we could do this. Is this something I want to do? Yes. But can I actually physically do this? Will I be able to do this?

Today, I still have that question. If you ask me, it is a serious challenge. I am 68 now. The preparation that you would require to do this, given my full-time job and the responsibilities I have, is a challenge. But I said to myself, “You can do it.”

The second phase was: we need a team. The decision was that we would go for eight people, maybe 10. We are now 14. Twelve are based in the UAE, one gentleman is based in London, and one gentleman is based in Panama. All committed. All training. All focusing on getting started in Barcelona on July 1, with the aim to arrive in Paris on July 26.

Then came the logistics. We worked with a professional company, so that was probably the easiest part, even though they had to find all the hotels, all the accommodation and all the logistics around that.

We decided to go for partners, sponsors and donors. We now have 12 partners supporting us, which is already giving us a significant amount of money that we will be able to donate to the foundation before actually having started our own individual fundraising campaign.

And now it is about communications. We are working with a professional organisation, raising awareness for what we do, but also raising awareness for the Al Jalila Foundation, and then trying to fundraise through the awareness that we want to create.

It is important to talk about what we do, but the most important thing is to inspire people to support our cause and to support the Al Jalila Foundation.

We are all individuals with full-time jobs. All of us have families, family obligations. The weekends are usually taken by training — four, five, six hours. Very often, where we go and train, you have to take your car early in the morning. You leave, drive an hour, then cycle for four or five hours, then go back. So basically the whole day is gone, and the family also wants some time with you.

Plus the focus on nutrition, the focus on being physically fit, and then the focus on fundraising. It is demanding a lot of effort from each and every person.

That is something I really want to highlight because it is something people don’t see. You only see 13 people who go and cycle for 3,300 kilometres. But in order to get there, in order to do it, it is the result of hard work on all levels.

For me, riding is just a means to get to the main objective, which has always been to raise awareness and to raise funds for the Al Jalila Foundation, and to inspire hope for people who get a cancer diagnosis and may not have the immediate means to be treated.

Every day there are people being faced with the diagnosis. I think everybody I speak to knows someone — either a family member or good friends. Cancer — everybody is faced with it, directly or indirectly.

In the current geopolitical environment, uncertainty disrupted people’s lives. People were going back home, taking the family, while the working partner stayed in Dubai. All of a sudden, life changed.

Within that time, I got the question, “Are you going to do your event?” And I said, “More than anything else, now is probably the time that we do something that also inspires people and that creates a message of hope.”

That is the pure purpose. There is no other purpose than that.

— I have many questions to follow up. Let’s start with the most important: how do the donations work? How can people look after the ride you are doing and take their part, donate and help with fundraising?

— Every rider has a donation link. They decide when they want to launch it. From my previous experience — and I have been fundraising since 2003 — I usually don’t start too early because July is still a long time away. It seems near, but it is still a long time.

All the money that is raised goes 100 per cent to the foundation. There is no money deducted for any costs that the riders have, because the riders are paying for their flights. They are paying for the logistics. They are paying for the accommodation. They are paying for the food.

So almost the whole month of being on the road, is being paid for by each and every individual rider. It isn’t like I raise 10,000 dirhams and then deduct all my costs, because that wouldn’t be the right thing.

— The sponsors, the partners that you mentioned — the 13 — they aren’t covering the costs of the event?

— There is a portion of the partnership funds that is going towards administrative and working expenses but that are required to raise awareness and as such contribute to the fundraising. e-Once. Once you deduct the working expenses the majority of the partnership funds go to the foundation.

— It is very cool that every rider is so committed.

— Every rider is raising funds on their own. Important to note is that every rider pays for their own expenses. It isn’t cheap. You need to fly to Barcelona. You need to fly back from Paris. You have 26 or 27 nights of accommodation, all the meals, and it is a lot because during the day, you are on the road for seven or eight hours on your bike. You need to eat.

There is a support company that carries all the food, organises the lunches and all. Plus the support cars, the fuel. There are five people in the support crew. They have salaries that need to be paid. That is all paid by the riders.

13 riders. Total cost is X divided by 13. Everybody pays their portion.

What the sponsors are contributing to is the working expense to create awareness around the event. Then obviously, we have cycling outfits and all the names are on the outfits. They will also be featured in social media. We are making a documentary of the whole event. So, of course, there is visibility there.

— Basically every rider is committed to being able to make it because the farther they go, the more money they can get?

— You sometimes have models where you ride 3,000 kilometres and someone donates one dollar per kilometre. We don’t have that system.

I reach out to my network here in Dubai, the Middle East or Europe. I reach out to people who I know will support me. I do that in my own way, which means I write to each and every person individually, introducing what I am doing. In the meantime, through social media, they should already know. But I write to them individually. And then it is up to them whether they donate on my link or not.

That is basically the way it works.

— And they can donate one time, five times, any kind of money? They can donate one dirham?

— They can donate 1 dollar or 10,000 dollars. It doesn’t matter. All the other riders are going to do exactly the same. They reach out to their network. Of course, some riders have a larger network than others, but they will reach out to their network and then see how much money they can raise.

— Do you have a target in your mind? How much money would you like to raise altogether?

— When I came up with the idea, I said, “We should be able to raise a million dirhams.” That was just a number.

We are already at that number. And we haven’t started the fundraising yet. So in that sense — one million dollars? No, I am not sure. I don’t want to put a number on it.

Don’t underestimate the times we are living in. I have seen it before. I remember the fundraising we did in 2009 in my previous life. We started our Road to Awareness initiative in 2008 for UNICEF, and then in 2009 there was the financial crisis. Everybody in the company said, “We shouldn’t do it this year because people aren't going to donate.” They still did. But the amount was less.

Given the uncertain environment we are living in today, people may give differently. One of the riders said, “Guido, I did a major fundraising two years ago. There’s one person who donated 50,000 dirhams towards my ride, who already told me, ‘I will give you, but it will be less.’” And that is fully understandable.

Now, people living in Europe or in other parts of the world may be less sensitive to it. But here in the UAE or in the Middle East, there may be an impact of what is happening in the region on the amount of funds that we can raise.

Having said that, we also have a gala that we are going to organise at the end of September. That is still to be launched, but we have started working on it. And we hope that through the gala we will raise more funds.

So it isn’t just the funds before the event, but also during the event and after the event. In my previous fundraising as well, I saw money coming in after I finished, because people actually want to see: have you done it?

That is the other part. There will be various phases, but I would like to refrain from putting a number on it. Because if you put the aim of raising a million dollars, even though I would love to, I am cautious to do so.

— Besides the event you are doing in July, Cycle Against Cancer is growing pretty fast. There are many events locally here in Dubai, a lot of riders doing things. I think the initiative is growing.

— We have one rider who organised two events. One lady rider organised two events, purely on her own initiative.

I think, at the moment, it is a name for an initiative. It is something that we believe can grow in the future, but we are actually still at the beginning. I hope our summer initiative will inspire people and they will say, “Oh my God, I want to do this next year.”

— Can you imagine opening it to more people? Because I can imagine there are cyclists who will see the event and say, “I want to do it next year.”

— We grew the team organically. Literally, I approached one person and he said yes. Then he approached a friend. Then he approached someone else. That is how we grew the team.

We aren’t an organisation with a group of people who work full-time on this. If I look at what we are going to do now, if there is one learning, actually, it is that this is almost like a full-time job, to get this all organised.

If you want to grow this, then we need to look at a different model. If you open it up, based on what we have done this year, or what we are going to do, if it is successful, then you have credibility because you have done it.

And you can say, “Look, this was our experience. We can do it again next year.” We can, definitely. But we aren’t there yet. Let’s first focus on what we are going to do this year.

— What is it going to mean for you personally, completing this journey?

— I can tell you one thing: when I arrive in Paris, I am not going to look at myself and say, “My God, what have you done?” I am not like this.

I will be proud of the team. I will look at the number — how much money have we raised? And if all the partners are happy with what we have done and how we represented them. We have a responsibility. We are representing them. We need to live their values.

It isn’t about me. It is all about the team, the foundation, and the people we are going to help through the foundation. That is what is going to make me happy.

— Considering that it is a very complicated task, both physically and mentally, I assume that every rider has a chance to drop out in case of a medical or mental emergency. Can you imagine it for yourself — that you drop out?

— The aim is the ride every kilometer but yes, I can imagine that I may not finish certain stages. I have never done riding 22 days in a row before. But the team focus is actually the number one priority.

What does that mean? You can only do riding if you rest well, eat well and recover. Otherwise, every day is going to be impossible. So the recovery of the team is critical. That means we need to arrive at our hotel at night at a certain time. You can’t arrive at the hotel at nine o’clock in the evening, because we aren’t going to be able to have dinner, sleep well or recover.

So you need to arrive at the hotel at a certain time. Between the place where we want to arrive and the hotel, there may still be a distance to cover by car. We already know that. As we are riding during the day, we can figure out how much time we need to arrive.

If I feel that I would slow down the team and that it would make it practically impossible to arrive at the time we need to arrive at the hotel, I will go in the support car.

This isn’t about trying to do the impossible. If I can finish the stage, I will finish the stage. But there may be days when I say, “You know what, today I’m only going to do two climbs. I can’t do the three or the four.” Or, “I’m going to finish at kilometre 120 because I don’t think I can continue without slowing down the team.” The team has total priority.

We have a couple of values that everybody has signed up to. The first is compassion and purpose. We do this entire ride for a purpose. In the world we are living in today, compassion and empathy are probably the most important values that you can have.

Number two: resilience and determination. Without that, we aren’t going to make it.

Number three: integrity and transparency. For me, that means communication to our donors, communication to the people who are donating to the cause, whatever amount they are donating.

There is the gratitude part. Being grateful that we can do this. Because when I got the idea, I knew that I was getting myself into something that maybe I wouldn’t be able to finish. But there again, it isn’t about me. It is about the team.

There are riders on the team who I can tell you are absolutely brilliant. They could start tomorrow and they would probably make it. There are riders on the team who will struggle, but they will make it. And I will be very happy for those.

As a team, even if not everybody is making every single stage, it doesn’t really matter. A lot of members of the team will make every single stage, and we are all helping each other.

Those are the values that we have created and that we are going to have in place. And we need to respect those values every single day. That is the real core of what we are going to do.