06/01/2018
TEAM BEMER: Powerhouse 8-Person Team
We’ve seen these guys before. In their previous incarnations as Innovation Africa, Team Live Earth, and Team Working Nation 4-person teams, they’ve tallied two wins and second place. Previous team members Kurt Broadhag, Chris DeMarchi, Tony Restuccia, and Phil Tintsman (seen in accompanying photo from 2016) will be joined by new members Karl Bordine, Michael Olheiser, Craig Streit and Joshua Stockinger as Team Bemer. All of these guys are elite road racing cyclists with many wins and podium finishes. They have the speed and experience to possibly be first to reach Annapolis. In fact, their goal is to break the 8-man team record of 24.19 mph set by Team Allied Forces in 2013.
As with their previous efforts, this 2018 team has a charity component. They’re racing to raise funds for the Pablove Foundation (http://www.pablove.org/). Founded by the parents of a youngster named Pablo who was lost to cancer at age six, the founders state, “When a child is diagnosed with cancer, an entire community is diagnosed with cancer. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, schoolmates, neighbors—even cyberspace friends—are moved by something we all feel intuitively: kids should never have to experience cancer. Our (pab)love story began in 2008 when our son Pablo was diagnosed with bilateral Wilms Tumor, a rare form of childhood cancer. From the day of his diagnosis, we took to the blogosphere to keep our loved ones up-to-date on Pablo’s progress…to vent…and to preserve our countless happy moments with him. Soon, our oldest friends were rallying alongside perfect strangers to help our family through each day.
“Pablove’s mission is based on our own journey with childhood cancer: our impassioned desire to find a cure, our search for information as parents trying to make informed decisions about our child’s treatment, and our desire to allow Pablo to still be a kid while he was in treatment.”
The team name comes from Bemer, a company who was a major sponsor in their 2016 victory. The company makes devices designed to improve the impaired pumping movements of small and very small vessels, which the company says in is an effective treatment option for many conditions. Broadhag commented, “The Bemer bed was instrumental in quicker recovery time as we rode across the U.S”.
“Once again we'll be doing RAAM in an entirely new way, from our minimal crew to our unique rider rotations,” Broadhag added, “We want to show that RAAM is something that can be done competitively on a reasonable budget. Our team members have a history of doing great things in unique ways, and we're looking forward to embarking on our biggest challenge yet.”
