The problem

Legendaria is my family's sports events company. In 2025 we decided to organise a cycling gran fondo with international ambition. We had never organised one before.

A new race lives or dies on trust. Nobody travels to an event they have never heard of, least of all from abroad. There was no brand. No community. No website and no sponsors. There was a date on a calendar.

The gran fondo calendar is crowded too. Every weekend there are races with decades of history and loyal crowds behind them. To exist at all, we had to look serious from day one, not from the third edition.

Beyond the sporting challenge there was a credibility one. Sponsors and media only listen when you have something to show. A first edition has nothing to show yet.

In a family company the client is you. Nobody pushes your deadline, and nobody saves you from it either.

From Alcaria I took on the entire digital layer. Brand, website, registrations, campaigns and media. The goal fit in one sentence. Fill a start line at the first attempt and get riders to cross borders for it.

The system

We built the digital ecosystem from zero. A website that answered every question a rider asks before paying. Route, climbing, logistics and what happens on race day. Registration ran online end to end.

The brand was designed to last years, not one poster. Name, identity and tone were built like those of a classic in the making.

The community grew post by post to 5,600 followers. Campaigns reached over a million people. Sponsorship and press work ran in parallel for months.

Part of the communication ran in English. A start line with 20 nationalities is not managed in a single language.

The event had its own system too. Registrations, emails and rider data kept in order from day one. When the chaos of the final stretch arrived, that base is what held.

I acted as spokesperson for the race on Cadena SER radio and Comarcal TV. Explaining an event live on air forces you to understand it before you open your mouth.

By race day, around 900 riders from 20 countries had registered. Miguel Indurain came to ride the first edition.

The signal I value most arrived afterwards. The second edition already has a date, 17 April 2027. This time we do not start from zero. There is a brand, a community and the data of a full edition behind it.

What went wrong

The weather. Race day arrived with a serious storm and a forecast that got worse by the hour.

We rebuilt the race minute by minute with the authorities. Course, timings, checkpoints and safety were all reworked that same morning, with the start closing in. Months of planning changed in a single morning.

Every change had to reach the riders while the next one was still being decided. The website and social channels went from selling the race to reporting in real time. That day I understood what we had built the community for.

Of the roughly 900 registered, about 600 took the start under the downpour. Indurain rode soaked like everyone else. That image tells the story of the first edition better than any campaign we ran.

I learned that plan B is not a document in a folder. It is the right people on the phone, clear authority to decide and calm when the script breaks.

I also learned that an event is nothing like anything you can build and ship. Race day happens once, rain or no rain, and there is no going back to fix it.

The second edition is being prepared with that lesson built in.