With just weeks to go before the Hincapie Gran Fondo, co-founder Rich Hincapie faced an impossible decision: cancel the event due to Hurricane Helene’s devastation or find a new way to help. Inspired by his brother George’s words—“We need to use this to help people”—Rich decided to reroute the cycling event into a massive fundraiser, turning the ride into a lifeline for hurricane-hit communities in North and South Carolina. Now, what began as a cycling challenge is poised to deliver critical support to those hardest hit by the storm.
>>Want to help hurricane-hit communities? Donate to the Polk County Community Foundation here to support relief efforts.
Lately, Rich Hincapie has gotten into rucking. During calls or lulls in the business day, the co-founder and president of his eponymous cycling brand straps on a thirty-five-pound weight vest and walks. He usually spends an hour rucking near Hincapie’s headquarters, which doubles as a retail location on the edge of downtown Greenville, South Carolina.
On his regular ruck last week, the words of his business partner and brother George kept ringing in Rich’s head. “Why aren’t we doing this?” George asked at a recent meeting to determine what to do about the brand’s popular flagship, Gran Fondo Hincapie. “We need to try and save this thing.”
As he walked, Rich wondered how they might salvage the event, which is scheduled for October 19, less than two weeks away from that moment. His initial thought was that it would be impossible to do anything but cancel the event, which typically consists of rides of three different distances, a post-ride festival on the grounds of the Hincapies’ cycling-adjacent Hotel Domestique, and nearly a week’s worth of dinners, parties, and shakeout rides.
After all, the Gran Fondo requires upwards of eight months of planning and preparation. It also requires police, EMTs, and other services during the event—services that could no doubt be better served helping people around the Greenville area. Then, something else George said popped into Rich’s brain.
“We need to use it to help people,” the sixteen-time Tour de France finisher had said to his brother. In that discussion, George stressed that the event already had “a couple thousand potential donors” planning to head to Greenville in just a few weeks.
A New Route Takes Shape
As he rucked, Rich started to map a new route in his head. Rather than the typical fifteen-, forty-nine-, or eighty-three-mile route, the latter two stretching well into North Carolina, could the Fondo be pulled off using one contained loop, all within Greenville County?
Hincapie pulled out his phone and called Captain Steven Rhea of the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office, asking if he could be at Hotel Domestique as soon as possible. “Bring a chainsaw,” Rich said.
The two spent the next few hours driving the nineteen-mile loop Rich envisioned during his ruck, hopping out whenever needed to saw through downed trees to clear the roads that might be used for a first-of-its-kind circuit.
Rich thought it was doable, but there were still plenty of bureaucratic hurdles to clear. Not to mention that the company wanted to avoid inundating officials who already had their hands full trying to recover the area from the storm. Still, he ran it up the official flagpoles and waited to hear back. Meanwhile, everyone at Hincapie got to work planning an event that usually takes the better part of a year in just a few days.
A week after Rich and Captain Rhea took their recon drive, Rich got a call from Greenville County, telling them to go ahead with the Fondo. After all, the city could no doubt use the injection of tourism dollars that the roughly 2,000 riders (and their friends, family, and support teams) bring along with them.
The Hincapie Gran Fondo would go on, albeit in a much different form than in its previous twelve years. It would be used as a massive engine to raise money for some of the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Helene—areas that the Hincapie Fondo rides through each and every year.
Turning the Fondo Into a Fundraiser
Greenville is just forty-five minutes by car from Asheville, North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc just a few weeks ago. Polk County, which includes the charming mountaintop towns of Tryon, Saluda, and Columbus, sits a few miles southeast of Asheville.
The Gran and Medio routes of the Hincapie Fondo pass through those towns every year, so it made sense to try to raise funds for that area—to give back to the towns that have provided Rich, George, and everyone else at Hincapie with a picturesque route year after year.
Given the devastation that hit Asheville and its status as the biggest town in western North Carolina, the city is garnering much of the media’s attention. However, many of those smaller towns were impacted similarly. “They got it bad up in Polk County,” Rich said. “And they just don’t have the reach to try and raise money and awareness.”
Meanwhile, while Greenville got hit hard, the damage wasn’t nearly as bad as it was just a few dozen miles up the road in North Carolina. “We’re blessed that we didn’t have near the devastation as western North Carolina,” Captain Rhea said.
After some discussion, Rich and George landed on $1,000,000 as a goal. “A million felt like kind of a ‘go big or go home’ number,” George said, adding that the fundraising will not stop once the Fondo is over. “It’s not like there’s a deadline where it’s gotta be a million by the event. We want to create an open line of promotion and awareness to help these communities.”
It’s a big number. But, given the number of people who turn up for the event and the fact that cycling tends to attract a well-heeled clientele, it was one the company thought they could hit. During my interview with Rich, one Fondo regular pledged a $10,000 donation.
However, as a for-profit company with neither the time nor the bandwidth to set up a 501(c)(3), Rich went directly to some friends in Polk County, who pointed him in the right direction. “All the money is going directly to Polk County Community Foundation,” Rich said. “Sarah and Tim Bell, who own Green River Adventures up in Saluda, told me about them.”
Now that the brand had a recipient, they needed to spread the word.
A blast went out to everyone who signed up for the Fondo, telling them that the ride was still on, explaining the shift toward philanthropy, and mentioning the event’s special guests: Mark Cavendish, Bradley Wiggins, Jan Ullrich, and Jolanda Neff. Hincapie designers went to work creating signage to be posted all around Hotel Domestique’s grounds, which serve as the start/finish line and the post-race family festival. Those signs will provide QR codes and easy links so riders and their families can easily donate on the spot.
Meanwhile, Rich and George started calling in favors, resulting in the bike brand Ventum, typically one of the event’s big sponsors, donating a bike to the auction. A few calls asking for sponsors at one of the weekend’s pre-ride dinners resulted in twenty-two liquor companies providing drinks. Local artist Jared Emerson volunteered to do a real-time speed painting of Cavendish, which will be painted and auctioned during the post-ride VIP party. One regular Fondo rider is even turning his exclusive annual invite-only post-race party into a fundraising dinner.
“Everyone is just stepping up to help,” Rich said.
The Event Will Go On
Riders who’ve ridden the Gran Fondo Hincapie will notice little difference from events past. Other than the fact that the ride will be a circuit—one loop for the Piccolo distance, three for the Medio, and four for the Gran—everything else that has come to define this as one of America’s premier sportives will remain. And that includes the leg-busting grades typical of the Gran Fondo Hincapie, as the short nineteen-mile route includes 1,706 feet of climbing, the medium fifty-seven-mile route includes 5,150 feet, and the long seventy-six-mile route clocks just under 7,000 feet.
“It won’t have the epic climbs like Skyuka Mountain or Green River Cove,” George said. “But one of the best parts of our Fondo is that anyone can ride it. You don’t need to be a pro cyclist.”
As the loop is entirely within Greenville County, the event won’t draw resources from other areas that need help. “We do not want to take away any police, rescue, or emergency support from North and South Carolina, and so we chose a course with minimal intersections and traffic,” Jamie Godfrey, Hincapie’s event manager, said in a recent press release.
As for the roads, there are just a few more trees to clear before everything on the tarmac is nearly back to normal. “By next week, all of the roads should be back to two lanes,” Captain Rhea said before cautioning potential riders about the traffic hazards, especially on one segment of the course that rides down State Highway 11. “Please, stay in your lane of traffic,” Rhea added.
Buddy Branscomb, a Greenville resident who works in facilities management for the state of South Carolina, said that while the area still has a long way to go to get back to normal, he’s confident the Fondo can go off without a hitch. “We’re to the point now that they should be able to handle it fine,” Branscomb said. “The way stuff is progressing around here, they should be ready.”
The Gran Fondo Hincapie has always given back. Whether raising money a few years ago to help a local police officer who was injured in the line of duty or to provide funds for the family of an officer killed in the line of duty, the company has long tied philanthropy to its marquee event.
But this year is different. For the first time in the event’s history, philanthropy is the goal. The bike ride? Well, that’ll just make for a great morning. “We want to rally the cycling community,” Rich said, likely while he was out rucking. “We want to show the world we’re so much more than just people in lycra on the road.”
Support Hurricane Relief Efforts
Join the Hincapie Gran Fondo and help rebuild communities impacted by Hurricane Helene. Every contribution makes a difference. Click here to donate to the Polk County Community Foundation. Together, we can make a lasting impact.
DISCLOSURE: The author of this story has been a Hincapie Brand Ambassador for the last four years.
Michael Venutolo-Mantovani is a writer and musician based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He loves road and track cycling, likes gravel riding, and can often be found trying to avoid crashing his mountain bike.
