Enough Cycling Collective are set for even greater adventures in 2023. 

You can follow them every step along the way.

At Campagnolo, we’re all about dreaming big, of helping you to challenge yourself to ever-great adventures. 

It’s an ethos matched by the Enough Cycling Collective who aim to inspire everyone to ride a bike in search of happiness, contentment and a whole lot of fun. 

Here, we catch up with co-founder Federico Damiani to tell us more about the Collective and their plans for 2023.

When did you form the Enough Cycling Collective?

The Collective was forged in 2021, though the idea was born almost one year before that, in the first bike rides after the pandemic lockdown. We were finally allowed to ride a bike in Italy after two months of staying at home. 

We – fellow founders Mattia [de Marchi] and Jacopo [Lahbi] – decided to go for an overnighter close to our home.

The mood was chilled; we simply wanted to spend time together riding bikes and being in touch with nature, something that we missed a lot. 

In the end the ride was really fun and gave us the opportunity to reflect on the spirit of riding. We came to the conclusion that this was the way cycling makes us happy and feel good.

So, the simple idea of “a bike is enough to be happy” was the cornerstone of this project. We realised we wanted to share that mood and that way of living cycling with others and try to inspire them to do the same. 

We had the idea to found the Collective mostly riding gravel because that’s what we enjoyed and that’s what we thought could be more inclusive. 

Gravel is such a wide concept that everybody can fit in, from the pure racer to the explorer.

So, do members have to be purely gravel riders?

We ride and race a lot on gravel, it’s true. But we like bikes in all their forms and we really don’t want to categorise too much. 

If there’s a road event we like and find interesting, we do it. If it’s a mountain-bike one, same.

That said, we think gravel is the concept that adapts better to our idea because it can mean a lot of different things for different people and it can be stretched a lot. 

So, a gravel bike can cover 80/90% of the events we find cool at the moment, from one-day races to long distance adventures.

What are the founders’ backgrounds?

The three founders don’t have much in common in terms of background. Mattia is a former pro cyclist; Jacopo a former pro track and field athlete; while I’m a marketing professional. 

We think our different backgrounds are one of the keys for this project to work, trying to keep things open-minded.

Can you tell us about some of the adventures undertaken so far by the Enough Cycling Collective?

Well, everything started before the Collective was born with the Atlas Mountain Race in 2020. It was 1,100km of unsupported riding in Morocco. I won the pairs competition. 

Other very big rides include the North Cape 4000 in 2012. This is a self-supported 4,200km ride from Italy to the North Cape in Norway that touches 10 countries.

There’s also the Silk Road Mountain Race in 2022. This is arguably the toughest adventure race in the world and covers 1,900km.

What Campagnolo equipment do you use?

We use Campagnolo’s Ekar groupset and we love it. It’s brilliant over both one-day races and multi-day adventure rides. When it comes to fast racing, we just love how light the Ekar is and it’s great having the 1 x 13 set-up. 

With the right cassette, you can have so many options without the need to add a second chainring in front. When it comes to adventure, one thing we love is having the mechanical option. 

When things go wrong you can always try to fix it.

How many members are in the Collective in 2023? Any new members?

This year we’re up to 10 members: six men and four women. We have two new women in the Collective and we’re super happy about it. Eleonora [Milesi] is from Italy. We met her last summer and were impressed by her attitude and how strong she is.

We also got our first non-Italian member of the Collective. Anna [Kollman-Suhr] is from Vienna. 

We got in touch last summer, too. It’s going to be really interesting to see how it’ll turn out with a rider from abroad but it’s a step we wanted to make and that we were planning for a while.

What are your plans and challenges for 2023?

We’ve a pretty packed calendar, starting with Race around Rwanda [starting 5th February] and going all the way up to the Across Andes challenge in Chile in November [19th to 24th]. In between, we’ll ride a lot of the races like the Migration Gravel Race in Kenya [20th to 23rd June] and Unbound Gravel in the USA [3rd June]. 

Last year we were pretty unlucky in the US, so we want to go back there and do better.

Where are your favourite places to ride?

We all like the area where several of us live to the point that we’re organising an event this year. It’s on the military roads of the First World War between Altopiano di Asiago, Monte Grappa and Monte Pasubio in Italy and very close to Campagnolo HQ. 

There are incredible roads up in the mountains and they deserve to be given visibility, both for their beauty and for their history.

We’re cyclists, we love to satiate our appetites. Can you tell us your favourite foods, please?

That depends if we’re talking about “normal” life or during an adventure race! When it comes to normal life, I think many of us are into Chinese and Thai food but we also like a lot of traditional Italian meals

For example, I love pizzoccheri from Valtellina, while polenta is quite the thing for the crew from Bergamo – Eleonora [Milesi] and Federico [Bassis]. When it comes to racing, the faster and easier, the better. So pizza, for sure. 

One thing we all have in common is that we enjoy a good beer in good company. We never say no to that.

Anything else you’d like to add about the Enough Cycling Collective?

Just get ready because we’ve just got started! We can’t wait for this season to begin.

You can follow the memorable exploits of the Campagnolo-using Enough Cycling Collective at enoughcycling.cc. You can also join at the same address.