French tandem pair set new Strava art world record with 2,000-kilometre heart

A father-daughter duo from France have set a new world record for the longest GPS art on a bike drawn by a team. 

Frédéric de Lanouvelle and his 16-year-old daughter Mathilde rode 2,162.3km on a tandem this summer, tracing a giant heart across France and raising funds for a children’s cardiac charity.

“This record attempt is a way of passing on to my daughter the values of surpassing oneself and of adventure, of discovering France and of getting a positive message across to as many people as possible,” Frédéric told Guinness World Records. 

The pair left Lyon on August 16 and sketched their design counter-clockwise, taking 15 days to do so, and riding with flat pedals.

“The benefit of the tandem is that if one of us is feeling a bit weak, the other can make up for it,” Frédéric told Réel Media. “It’s 15 days of togetherness, of talking. These are lifelong memories.”

The duo set out to raise €24,000 for French charity Mécénat Chirurgie Cardiaque, enough money to support care for two children with heart defects. Their fundraising page is now almost at €27,000.

A keen adventurer, father Frédéric had previously completed the Marathon des Sables, a 250km ultra running race held in the Moroccan desert, with his eldest daughter, Cécile. 

His heart-shaped tandem ride with daughter Mathilde more than doubled the previous world record, also held by a French team. 

In late 2022, four friends drew a Velociraptor just north of Clermont-Ferrand, in the centre of the country, with a ride that took six days and stretched out over 1,025km. 

The quartet had also previously drawn smaller dinosaur designs - a Tyrannosaurux Rex and a Diplodocus - each one totalling around 200km. 

The popularity of Strava art has grown in recent years, thanks in part to advances in route-planning platforms. 

Last August, couple Arianna Casiraghi and Daniel Rayneau-Kirkhope used mainland Europe as a canvas for their GPS drawing of the world’s largest bike. 

The duo’s ride was 7,237km in length and spanned seven countries, giving them the official world record for the largest GPS drawing undertaken by any means of travel.