The Jakarta International Expo (JIExpo) in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, was vibrant on Sunday morning, as cyclists from around the world gathered to join the final round of a global cycling competition.

Enthusiasts crowded the exhibition center on Aug. 25 to wrap up their annual Cycle Messenger World Championship (CMWC) in Jakarta, the first city in Southeast Asia to host such an event.

Hendi Rachmat, the initiator and head of the organizing committee of this year’s CMWC, said about 240 participants from 32 countries took part in the 27th bicycle courier world championship held since Aug. 23.

“The participants include 80 Indonesians from the five big cities of Jakarta, Bogor, Surabaya, Makassar and Medan. Only four of them passed the qualification stage and made it to the top 60 competing in the finals,” Hendi told The Jakarta Post during the finals.

Hendi added that there were two main contests, namely the main race and the cargo race, each of which consisted of a male and a female category.

In the competition, participants scored by completing the given assignments, namely delivering packages in a timely manner from the correct pick-up addresses to the drop-off addresses.

The cargo race had the participants deliver oversized packages, which they called manifests, from one point to another.

“The tasks are similar to what bike couriers do in their daily work,” Hendi said. “The juries assessed the speed of [delivery] and errors carried out during their missions.”

Besides the two races to deliver packages, there were also some side competitions, including skids, race sprints, backward race sprints, gold sprints, track stands and a criterium.

The CMWC was started in 1992 by Achim Beier and his assistant Stefan Klessman, both of whom worked for a Berlin-based courier service and who were inspired to initiate a worldwide gathering of bicycle messengers.

Meanwhile in Indonesia, the idea of bike couriers started to gain attention from the cycling community when Hendi found courier service provider Westbike Messenger Service (WMS) in 2013.

WMS initiated Indonesia’s participation in the CMWC in 2015 for the 23rd competition in Melbourne, Australia. Two years later, during the championship in Montreal, Canada, WMS proposed that Indonesia host the 2019 event.

“After the proposal was approved in 2017, WMS started to plan this year’s championship with support from the Indonesian Bicycle Sport League (ISSI), the Jakarta administration and the Youth and Sports Ministry,” Hendi said.

Carla Bruppacher, 36, who won the female category of the main race, said she had been working as a bike messenger in her country Switzerland since 2012 and had never dreamed of winning a global competition.

“This is my fourth time joining the CMWC, and I have never won before. I joined the championship just wishing to meet people and enjoy the community. It is like a family,” Carla told the Post.

“This is my first time in Indonesia, and I am very astonished by the bike community here in Jakarta. There is a big community of many young people enjoying their fixed gear bikes, an impression of the city that I never knew before,” she added.

Meanwhile, Clement Leroy of France, who won the male category in both skids and gold sprint, said it was his seventh time joining such a competition, and it would not be the last.

“What I love most about the biking community is their open nature. Too many people are focusing on taking care of their image, but they lose themselves instead. But everyone in this community is being who they are and doing what they like,” said the 31-year-old.

“We need more people like bike messengers everywhere, even in small cities. They are like breathing. They also keep us breathing,” he said.

The head of the ISSI Jakarta provincial board, Dito Ariotedjo, said this event could increase the public’s interest in cycling and the bike community could promote a new and healthy culture in Indonesia.

“This is a competition of bike couriers, the ones in a profession that now employs many young people,” Dito said. “This event could provide good examples of work ethic and discipline from bike couriers to be learned by the public.”

Next year, Dito revealed, the CMWC would be held in Bogota, Colombia. He hoped there would be more young bike messengers representing Indonesia and that the athletes could also prepare themselves to compete in the Olympics.(syk)

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