World T.E.A.M. Sports at 20 Years October 2013 | Page 11

Tour de France winner Greg LeMond, center, rode the inaugural Face of America crosscountry ride in 2000. World T.E.A.M. Sports archive photograph.

injury. A total of 100 core and stage riders participated in the ride,
including participants as young as six years and as old as 77 years.
In November 2000, World T.E.A.M. Sports athletes traveled to
Cuba to participate in the Havana Marathon. The first American team
to run in the marathon, team members also met with the Cuban Sports
Federation for the Disabled. At the meeting, team member Carlos
Moleda, on behalf of World T.E.A.M. Sports, demonstrated and
presented to the Cuban Paralympic Committee a Stage One handcycle
donated by Freedom Ryder and a racing wheelchair donated by
HallsWheels — gifts that provided much needed equipment to
disabled Cuban athletes.
The Italian Dolomite Trek from World T.E.A.M. Sports offered an
integrated climbing adventure for women along the Via Ferrata, an
extensive system of high mountain routes in the Italian Alps. The

group traveled together to the Brenta region in the Dolomites, a
magnificent mountain range of bold rock towers and spires, cliffs, and
ridges. The Via Ferrata is an ancient trail built to transport iron from
the mines to the melting furnace in the western Italian Alps. The trail is
a spectacular series of narrow ledges, and walkways protected by steel
cables, vertical iron ladders, and narrow gullies and ridges that use
cables, pegs and steel rungs pounded into the mountain to aid in
climbing and for protection.
On September 8-9, 2001, World T.E.A.M. Sports introduced a new
event held in the mountains of
North Carolina. In the footsteps of
the world-renowned Hood to Coast
Relay in Oregon, the Mountain
Madness Challenge Relay in
Asheville attracted teams to
participate in a challenging 160 mile
team running relay. The route from
the top of Beech Mountain to
Asheville took teams along the Blue
Ridge Parkway to the top of Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak in the
eastern United States.
Like much of America, the September 11, 2001 attacks on
Washington and New York changed the direction of World T.E.A.M.
Sports. Revising plans, the September 2002 Face of America was
dedicated as a “moving memorial” to the victims of the attacks. It
included more than 1,400 participants riding 277 miles in three days
from Ground Zero in New York City to the Pentagon in Arlington,
Virginia. 2002 World T.E.A.M. Sports co-chairman Peter D. Kiernan