In September of 2025 I was part of the media team covering the Alps Divide Ultra Cycling event. A 1000km off-road ultra bike packing event from Menton on the Mediterranean coast of France to Thonon-Les-Bains on the shores of Lac Leman.
This is a series of interviews, footage and race commentary that originally went live on both my Instagram and the DotWatcher.cc Instagram to provide ongoing insight into the race.
In this clip I introduce the race.
Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to Montton and welcome to the start line of the Alps Divide 2025. My name is Neil Copeland and on behalf of dot watcher, I’m going to be bringing you something slightly different in terms of race coverage for this race. We’re going to be doing live interviews uh capturing some of the descents and bringing you some of the things that are going on real time from the course as we go throughout the next 10 days. So, what is the Alps Divide? It’s a thousand km ultra race, predominantly off-road, 33,000 m of climbing, 32,000 m of descending, an awful lot to challenge uh the riders uh over the course of the next 10 days. Last year, I took part and it’s fair to say the weather was interesting. I think this year we’re hoping for a little bit calmer conditions, but riders can expect sun, rain, maybe a little bit of snow, and maybe some sub-zero conditions. Now, this is something new that we’re trying, so we welcome feedback. If you’ve got any thoughts about riders you want us to talk to, things you want me to cover, if you have any questions about the race, then please do post in the comments below, uh, and we can try and take some action on that. So, in the meantime, sit back, enjoy. I will be there at the start line tomorrow morning, uh, just before midday uh, as the riders set off on this epic adventure. Uh, thank you for watching and see you out on the