September 20, 2007, Lausanne

A successful 2007 edition!

Four 2007 MSA students (Irene Girardo Crocini, Dominique Gobat, Masaru Yokoo, and Pranav Khot) carried out their team project on the Polygiro tour. One of them, Ms. Irene Girardo Crocini, worked as an intern in the organising committee.

Polygiro is an annual cycling tour organized by three Polytechnical Universities: the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), INPG (Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble) and POLITO (Politecnico di Torino). The 2007 second edition of the Polygiro was very successful with 59 participants, twice as many as in 2006.

The aim of the Polygiro is to bring together students and employees of the three Polytechnic Institutions around a cycling event that visits each of the three campuses. Since there is no competition, this tour provides a unique opportunity for the participants to interact freely in a sporting environment and to promote “Sports for all.” The organizing committee makes sure that everyone can finish the stages at their own pace thanks to a support team following the riders on all the routes.

The tour lasted 5 days, during which all the categories (Leisure, Medium, and Strong) of “POLYRIDERS” - as Mr. René Bugnion , the president of the association, calls the participants - covered approximately 500 km on scenic and historical routes through Switzerland , Italy and France .

The route was modified from last year to give the riders the opportunity to the discover: “Le petit saint Bernard”,”Le col de l’Iseran”,”Le col du Télégraphe”,”Le  col de Romeyere,” among a number of other passes that have been biked by the Tour de France cyclists.

A word from Irene Girardo Grocini, organizing committee member and MSA 2007 student:

“From my experience as an organizer, I can say that it has been a lot of work to create the success of the 2007 edition, requiring much energy throughout the year. Thanks to a very competent and compact organizing team, we managed to get everything ready on time. The Polygiro from my “Polyrider” experience was just amazing. As a spinning instructor who has never even biked the “Avenue d’Ouchy” in Lausanne on a road bike, I managed to bike some of the most famous passes of the TO U R DE FRANCE …who could have imagined that? I thought that with all the spinning training I had done, I could easily bike any pass but I realized that maybe I should have trained a little more on the road because IT IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!!!! Polygiro made me discover another sport, other beauties of nature, and also a lot of great people. The five days have passed so quickly and I can keep this souvenir as one of the most exciting in all my life.”

You can read comments from participants on the following website : www.polygiro.org