TRANSMISSION | JEAN-STEPHAN & ANDRÉA MIFSUD

Jean-Stephan and Andréa Mifsud are familiar faces: you might have seen Jean-Stephan in some of our shoots, and Andréa is part of the Café du Cycliste Gravel Team 2024.

Recently, they lined up for the Traka, the gravel race outside Girona, northern Spain – both racing the 200km event in their Café kit. But more normally you’ll find them riding in the hills outside Nice.

TRANSMISSION | JEAN-STEPHAN & ANDRÉA MIFSUD

A real local family, they both grew up in the Nice area and both learned their love of cycling on these roads. Jean-Stephan inherited his passion from his grandfather and he passed it on to his son as soon as Andréa was old enough. “I didn’t choose cycling, cycling came for me!” Jean-Stephan says.

They now live together near Nice, and train together too, pushing each other to go harder – though Jean-Stephan admits that Andréa always gets the better of him. And so he should: for the past four years Andréa, 25, has been a professional cyclist with the local Nice Métropole Côte d’Azur team – before making his gravel debut for Café du Cycliste this year.

Cycling wasn’t his first love, however: as a kid he’d been a talented footballer, and he was being tracked by OGC Nice – the local first-division club – when a cruciate ligament injury put an end to his hopes to make a life playing the beautiful game. It was impossible to operate, as he was still an adolescent; only swimming and cycling remained open to him.

Andréa made his choice, got a racing licence and entered his first race – a local cyclocross event on a bike he’d borrowed at the last minute. He won. Then the road season started and he won some more – and he hasn’t looked back since.

“It became addictive,” Andréa says. Jean-Stephan adds that Andréa’s successes are down to his own motivation alone: “I’ve never been a coach, always a dad,” he says.

For Andréa, racing is about transcending the self. Every race is an invitation to dig deeper, find new wells of energy inside himself, go beyond his limits.

As for Jean-Stephan, there’s also an inner exploration going on: “Only when you pin a number on can you truly know yourself,” he says. And every win he chalks up as a veteran is also a victory over the passing of time – the ultimate time trial.

Increasingly, they have added gravel to their riding routines, finding new routes through the Niçois backcountry, where the seasons and the weather create an ever-changing landscape and the roads and trails are among the best in the world.

Niçois gravel stood them in good stead for the Traka 200, just outside Girona in northern Spain, where they prepared together, collected their race numbers together, took the start line together… a passion made even stronger by being shared. Check out Andréa and the Gravel Team here.