Like all major events taking place this year, we are extremely disappointed that we’ve not been able to hold our twentieth Saddleback Fred Whitton Challenge.
Over the years we have raised just short of two million pounds for our charities and we had hoped to reach that target this year, however unfortunately the virus stopped us achieving this. Hopefully things will improve for 2021 and we will be back on track with our charity fund raising from there onwards. Despite the cancellation of the event and through the generosity of our riders we are still able to donate £25,000 to Macmillan and £10,000 each to Duddon & Furness Mountain Rescue, Great North Air Ambulance and North West Air Ambulance. All our main charities are linked with the NHS and we will continue to support them any way we can.
As well as the above donations, we have also been working hard behind the scenes to support our various youth cycling projects throughout the country. This work is ongoing from year to year with the aim of making youth cycling accessible to everyone in all its different formats, performance levels and methods of participating.
Paul Loftus MBE – President of the Fred Whitton Challenge
In a time of uncertainty, providing support for our charities is one of our favourite and most rewarding parts of delivering the Saddleback Fred Whitton Challenge. Here’s what our charities had to say about it.
Lisa Wild – Macmillan Cancer Support
“We’d like to say a huge thank you to the Saddleback Fred Whitton Challenge team for their fantastic donation. The event has been a long-term supporter of Macmillan, raising over £1 million over the years. Sadly the event could not go ahead this year due to the pandemic so we were absolutely delighted and surprised to receive a cheque for £25,000 during these uncertain times”
Martin Cooper – Duddon and Furness Mountain Rescue
“This donation has come at a time when all our usual fundraising initiatives have dried up and will help to go towards the building of the new team base in Foxfield”
Sarah Thompson – North West Air Ambulance
“We want to say thank you again to the generosity of the whole Saddleback Fred Whitton Challenge committee. Your decision is extremely kind and it will certainly help to support our work at an incredibly challenging time for us all. We receive updates from the crew each week and they continue to be extremely busy. We also share our news with them and I know this will be very welcome news indeed. It means a lot to us all to know how much people still value their work”
Angela Doran – Great North Air Ambulance
“We are extremely grateful to the Saddleback Fred Whitton Saddleback Challenge for making a donation of £10,000 to the Great North Air Ambulance Service (GNAAS) in 2020. During the pandemic our lack of ability to conduct community and event engagement has impacted the charity at its peak by £100,000 per month. During lockdown, between April – August we were called out 580 times, so the service is in demand now more than ever, without these vital donations we wouldn’t be able to continue the life-saving missions we do.”
The next edition of the Fred Whitton Challenge is on Sunday 9th May 2021, all entries have been rolled on from our 2020 event through to 2021. If you had a place in the 2020 event please keep an eye out for an email from us during the start of November, when we will be asking you to reconfirm your place.
All the best from the Saddleback Fred Whitton team!