This year, the Special Olympics will be held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates and will run from March 8 to March 21.

There are 7000 athletes competing from 170 nations across 24 sports and Australia has 105 athletes competing under the Australian flag with 34 of those athletes being from Queensland.

Queensland athletes will be competing in 11 of these sports including Athletics, basketball, bocce, bowling, equestrian, football, golf, gymnastics, sailing, swimming and tennis.

The Law Enforcement Torch Run is a world wide initiative that seeks to raise money and funds for the Special Olympics and this year was the inaugural launch of a virtual version of this event.

After registering, the virtual run allows participants to nominate a distance that they want to achieve throughout the course of February.

Participants are then allowed to complete this distance in segments by a combination of running, walking, swimming or cycling. It’s a great way to get out and do something active and it supports a great cause.

As some of our regular readers might know, throughout February the Brisbane City Bike Squad has been participating in this virtual version of the Law Enforcement Torch Run.

Brisbane Bike Squad nominated to cover 2500 km throughout February to raise money and awareness for The Special Olympics.

On the Tuesday February 19, as a team we rode the Brisbane River loop in full kit and accoutrements to rally support for Queensland athletes.

I’m proud to say we have smashed our goal of 2500 kilometres and at last count, we are sitting at 2764 kilometres and climbing!

The team put in a sterling effort and had a great time motivating each other throughout the month.

Thank you to everyone who supported this great cause and we hope you got out and enjoyed being active.

A big thank you to Brendans Café on the Goodwill Bridge whose staff kindly held a collection tin throughout the month and thankyou to everyone who donated their spare change to this initiative.

Brisbane City Bike Squad would also like to thank Stacey Ward the Law Enforcement Torch Run Ambassador for organising the virtual run and for delivering some very well deserved medals to the team. We are looking forward to participating again next year and encourage others to do the same.

The Special Olympics athletes oath is “Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt”, these are pretty encouraging words.

We wish our Aussie athletes every success in the upcoming games, everyone back home will be cheering them on to both enjoy themselves and bring home the gold.