Hither Green dad cycles in shape of Olympic image on Strava

Nico Georgiou's masterpiece took over a month and a half to plan and around 40 hours to complete.

The 59-year-old planned stops at seven checkpoints with historical links to the Olympics to create his map tracker drawing on exercise app Strava.

The artwork marks this year's competition in Paris - the 2024 Olympic host city which his map drawing coincidentally covers around the same size as.

(Image: Nico Georgiou / SWNS)

Clothes designer Mr Georgiou has previously created similar artworks of Mark Cavendish for the Tour de France and Queen Elizabeth for her Platinum Jubilee as well as logos for multiple cycling clubs he's in.

His latest work sought to recreate the ancient Greek statue of Discobolus, which inspired posters for the London Olympic Games in 1948.

Despite the physical challenge of his mammoth cycle, Mr Georgiou admitted his most nail-biting moment came when waiting for his data of the completed ride to upload.

The dad-of-three, who got into 'Strava art' during the pandemic, said: "The Olympics drawing started about a month and a half ago.

"I've been doing Strava art for a while now - it's a bit of fun, really.

"I was talking to the team at the Rapha Cycling Club in Soho, and they said they'd be doing an Olympics checkpoint challenge.

"The point-to-point was around 50 kilometres. They said just to design a route to draw the rings, but I thought I'd go a bit further.

"You start plotting point-to-point - it's like dot-to-dot - to draw the picture.

"The Olympics one had 750 waypoints.

"I didn't really sleep the night before. I was studying my route."

The checkpoints included the Olympic stadium in Stratford - now West Ham United's London stadium - the velodrome at Herne Hill and a gold letterbox commemorating the London 2012 games.

But Mr Georgiou admitted things got difficult when crossing bodies of water such as the Thames.

To achieve a straight line at some points, he pauses his Strava app, cycles to the other side and turns it on again.

"You need to know where all the pauses are and you can't mess up," Mr Georgiou continued.

"I did the cycle all in one go. I started at three am Saturday (27/07) morning, got prepared and cycled until around five am on Monday.

"I had around three hours rest and carried on until around midnight [on Sunday].

"It was around 40 hours in total, with around 26 or 27 hours moving time.

"I've got a beacon and my wife, Rosey, was tracking me, asking me if I was still alive and if I wanted to come home.

"You do get haters saying it's all fake, but Strava calculates your heart rate and distance covered, so it's all there."

The Olympic artwork is Mr Georgiou's longest to date - covering a distance roughly equivalent to that between London to Newcastle in the northeast.

But his most nervy moment came at the end when he returned to his start point at the Rapha's clubhouse in Soho, hit upload and waited to see if his app could calculate the huge trip without crashing.

"I hit upload and thought, 'Please, don't mess up'," Mr Georgiou said.

"This was 40 hours of data. I think I sweated more then than climbing up some of the hills."

On how he got into Strava art, Mr Georgiou added: "I had time during Covid and there were people around the world doing it.

"But with places like San Francisco or Australia, their roads are on a grid system; it's like an Etch A Sketch - you can draw really good things.

"London is a bit of a challenge... there are things you have to get around, but as time went on I worked out how to overcome the obstacles.

"The Mark Cavendish one got millions of views when the Tour de France posted it - which was gobsmacking.

"My daughter keeps asking me to draw her something [on Strava]. "It's great to see the sunset and sunrise, but it's a labour of love.

"People think there's something wrong with me - my wife thinks there's something wrong with me - but I just get on with it."

Mr Georgiou, who is also part of cycle club Chain Gang Cyclists, has completed several charity bike rides in the past and is keen to do more - encouraging any interested parties to get in touch.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nico_georgiou/