Toronto Councillor Brad Bradford’s marathon 24-hour virtual bike ride in support of staff at Toronto’s Michael Garron Hospital raised more than $200,000 — and the councillor didn’t even have to leave his home.

The virtual ride started Friday evening and, once it was over, Bradford took to Twitter to thank the 418 riders and 2,272 donors.

“I’m speechless,” Bradford wrote.

Mitze Mourinho, the president of the Michael Garron Hospital Foundation, said nobody believed there was a “chance they were going to get to $100,000, and here we are with $205,000.”

“We had cyclists from Italy, cyclists from Brazil,” she said Saturday night. “It was incredible how the cycling community came to together for our front-line health-care providers.”

The hospital foundation has the discretion to spend the funds according to need, Mourinho said. “We want to support our nurses, our physicians and our staff who are working around the clock.”

The Crush COVID fundraiser had already surpassed its $150,000 goal by Saturday morning. The money will go to purchasing protective equipment for the hospital, which also runs a COVID-19 assessment centre. Some has also been allocated for staff transportation, food and equipment.

Mayor John Tory praised the initiative on Twitter, saying the strength and determination of the participants, along with the support of many residents, led to its success.

The event, in which the cyclists were racing around a virtual track, was hosted on the online cycling app Zwift and broadcast live on Facebook.

Bradford, the councillor for The Beaches-East York, committed to cycling without a break and spent 13 and a half hours on the bike in the week before the event.

“The intention is to ride all the way through, I’ll take a couple quick restroom breaks,” Bradford said 25 minutes into the race.

“We’ve got a lot of support, almost 400 participants who are joining … a lot of folks are doing it in relay teams. We (have) 40 teams. It’s just been tremendous to see everyone’s response to support our front-line health-care workers.”

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The fundraiser was Bradford’s brainchild, Mourinho said. “Brad has a great network of people and he just really mounted this in no time.”

Tory joined the broadcast live at the beginning of the ride Friday evening.

“There are hundreds of volunteers signed up to work at food banks, there are people helping the elderly, we’ve got these phone trees going on where people are calling each other to look after seniors by themselves, we’ve got many volunteers helping the Red Cross,” he said. “It’s fantastic what has gone on in the city.”

Miriam Lafontaine is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star’s radio room in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @mirilafontaine