Tell us a little about yourself.

My name is Hugo Chevalier, a meticulous daydreamer, co-founder of MadCap and Big Fat Ride, a bit of an ultra-cyclist, a very enthusiastic bikepacker and ambassador for Café du Cycliste.


How did you get into cycling, and particularly ultra-cycling?

It’s pretty banal! I did my first bike trip in 2016 just after getting my degree in engineering, more to take some time to reflect on what’s next than anything else. I didn’t fall for cycling straight away, but the exhilaration of travelling across whole regions by pedal power was immediately powerful and intoxicating. I didn’t realise it then, but the first little seed that would lead me into bikepacking and then ultras was planted. After that, I went back to the reality of my first full-time job in Paris, complete with suit, leather shoes and impossible hours… then, in 2018, I bought my first commuter bike, for €200 from a bike-shop basement.

That was the second seed: it quickly became the best part of my day. Around that same time, I first rode with the guys from Paris Chill Racing [PCR, a Paris-based gravel collective] and discovered this amazing, poetic, fierce community – and everything began to come together. I got my first real gravel bike and got swept up in the bikepacking wave. It felt like a real liberation – the chance to play at being Jack London or Jack Kerouac every weekend, just by leaving the house.

That was when I started hearing people talk about ultras, but it was still pretty obscure. The whispers I caught left me dreaming, but it was more like you might dream about becoming an astronaut than something realistic. My first conversations with a few ‘ultra-ists’ (I can’t think of a better word) changed my mind. A year after buying my first gravel bike, I signed up for Born to Ride, which opened the floodgates for a Desertus Bikus, a Three Peaks Bike Race and the TCRNo9 (DNF because of a knee injury after 3,000km). I’m writing these lines just a few days before the start of Badlands, and have already programmed in Desertus 2025.

How did you first meet Sam, co-founder of MadCap?

It was on the first edition of the Big Fat Ride (BFR), in the middle of the Covid pandemic, so I’ll need to take you on a little digression about the BFR here: on my first ultra I met Sabine and Clément, my BFR co-founders. The basic aim was simply to find other people with whom to ride 200 or 300km each month, bringing together a community that already existed but didn’t have regular meet-ups. Sam was part of this community, and came along to the first BFRs with a NorthCape4000, among other rides, already under his belt. Quickly, BFR beers became a tradition and we became mates! And since riding a BFR leaves a lot of time for discussion, we had plenty of opportunities to talk shop. We were both engineers by training, but had totally different jobs – good complimentary skills for what was to come.


When did you guys have the idea for MadCap?

It was exactly a year ago. There was an alignment of stars – too many to pass up on for this crazy project! From Sam’s side, he’s a solid development engineer with 15 years’ experience, the sort of candidate recruiters go crazy for. 

He’d just finished some contracts and was looking for new projects. He’d already collaborated with Yvan, the Desertus and Nomadian organiser, on some IT issues around the second edition of Desertus, and Yvan had asked him if there was a way of getting started on a custom dotwatching system for the next edition…As for me, I’d just left my company after seven years in business engineering, firmly set on putting my suit away and doing something else. While we were getting ready for TCRNo9, he presented the idea to me and proposed that we team up: him on the tech side and me on the commercial and project management. 

In parallel with all this, it was a time when people were complaining about existing dotwatching systems – complaining that there weren’t simple, clear tools for non-bikepacking friends and loved ones to use to follow participants. On paper, everything was there: our work, our cycling and dotwatching experience (on the bike as much as spectating) and our availability; we also had a good community network and a first client (and what a client, with 300 participants!), as well as a big frustration, on our part and within the community, with the existing tools. At that moment, an obsession was born that will stay with us: to develop the best dotwatching tool for the outdoor sport community and their loved ones. But the road ahead was long. One thing we lacked was a designer.

How is MadCap different from other trackers?

Right from the start we wanted something that was easy for one and all to use, that was modern, looked good and was sized for cycling ultras. That’s what we thought was so lacking in the marketplace. For us it had to be app-based, and we’re the only ones out there that are seriously proposing an app. We’re all from the ultra world, we know exactly what’s needed during a bike race… We know that trying to hit a too-small button on your phone at night, in the rain, is hell, that you only have at most a couple of seconds to take your eyes off the road, that everything has to be within reach. We know that charging a tracker is a drag, that our family at home don’t really care about data, but are often anxious about us, and that the only thing that will reassure them is a glowing dot on a screen at night. All these aspects guided the design from the blank canvas to today. What’s more, we’re making the app 100 per cent ourselves, which leaves us free to develop it exactly as we see fit. The difference between the first release and the app that closes the season is huge… imagine what it’ll be like in a year or two!


Any good stories from the creation/design process?

Ah! I’m not sure it’s a good idea, but I’ll share the worst… consider it a way of publicly exorcising the moment. It was the launch… MadCap was first revealed to the public at Desertus, one of the biggest ultras in Europe, with 300 riders, and headline names who everybody wanted to dotwatch.  Launching such a young app was clearly rock and roll, crazy, or reckless… I’ll let the reader judge. But we knew exactly what we were doing. Everything was ready to handle the load: us, the app, and… the servers.

We knew the web traffic would be enormous, we had everything planned. And yet, for a mind-blowing reason beyond our control, the mechanism we put in place was blocked by our cloud host on the first race day despite all our tests. It was a disaster. Crisis management. The app was no longer accessible. We knew everyone was watching us: other organisers (our future clients…), competitors, cyclists, and dotwatchers. With pressure and fatigue at their peak, Yvan had a reaction that I still find fantastic today (I feel like writing “Badass”): even though we could have ruined his event, he simply said to us calmly: “Figure it out, it has to work. I trust you.” And you know what? That’s what we did. Everything returned to normal on the first race day – but not without difficulty, as our host was unresponsive. Sam had to set up servers all over Europe by hand, all while on a bus between Spain and Portugal; I’ll let you imagine the atmosphere. The incident is still under discussion with our cloud host, but bolstered by that bad experience, we have since implemented the most robust servers in the West; I dare any race to bring them down. For proof: the weekend following the Desertus, we set off again for another week with 300 trackers, this time without a hitch. That was the first and last time: we made the necessary adjustments and were able to demonstrate our ability to solve a major issue, live.


Anything to add?

Yes! We’re all waiting impatiently for Café du Cycliste to release Audax bib tights with pockets. Is it happening? I’m asking for a friend...

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