Posted on July 5, 2022 by Tyler Benedict
Peaks Coaching founder Hunter Allen has launched Project Fuerza to capture top pros’ performance data and turn it into art, which will be issued as NFTs throughout the Tour de France.
Top cyclists, including Peter Sagan, Geraint Thomas, Mark Cavendish, Dan Martin, Jens Voigt and many more are on board to have their biometric data turned into digital art. Each piece is said to have meaning to the rider since it captures a key performance from their race.
The NFTs will be sold at ProjectFuerza.com, with new artwork added every Friday in July. Purchasers will own the digital art, verifiable on the blockchain, and gain access to review the athlete’s complete power profile data for that day. Some even include the chance to meet or chat with the rider, too.
Each NFT also captures a story from the rider about that performance, detailing the ride, the atmosphere, and their feelings about it. Shown at the top of this post is Mark Cavendish’s recent British National Championship Elite Road Race win. It’s just the final sprint of the race, where Mark handily won. The outline of the rock is the shape of his power data in the sprint and the red line is his heart rate data. It’s a 1 of 1 and contains the power file.
Other pieces celebrate rides from Geraint Thomas, like this one titled “Surprise Attack” by artist Facundo Kostelak celebrating the Dauphine Stage 5 2021 (Saint-Chamond to Saint-Vallier). where Geraint attacks with 1k to the finish for the win, holding off Sonny Cobrelli at the finish line. “It wasn’t planned,” Thomas said. “I knew Bahrain didn’t have any guys left. I knew it was all lined out and the last bit was a bit twisty so I just thought ‘sod it, go for it’. I went with a kilometre to go, the boys said on the radio that I had a gap, and I just went all in.
“To be honest, I didn’t think I had that on the line. I just sat up two meters from the line to start to give it the big one, but man, Colbrelli came past so fast he nearly took my helmet off. But it’s really nice to get that win for sure.” The art turns his power data and made a scatter plot out of this one, called the Quadrant Analysis, which tells you how the athlete created power. Those dots are throughout the piece of art that is an excellent example of blending art, imagery and power data all into one. Contains bio-metric data file.. 
…and Leah Thomas, with this piece titled “A Slice of My Life” by Nick Hand, inspired by the Ardeche Stage 7 2021. She placed 4th on the stage and OVERALL GC winner. “Another strong stage finish for Leah and she took quite a journey to get to the Overall Win. Her team was fantastic today and kept it all under control chasing down so many attacks. A stage is a slice of the race, and the race is just a slice of her life. A very cool slice.”
Rohan Dennis celebrates his USA PRO 2015 Stage 7 and OVERALL WIN with this piece titled “Vision” by artist Patrick Green. “Not everyone sees power the way that Rohan does, but when you see a piece of incredible art, and every time you look at it again, you see something new. A quintessential Fuerza NFT”
Other riders include Ryder Hesjedal, the first-ever Canadian to win the Giro D’Italia, and Jens Voigt, with a massive collection of poster art around his “Shut Up Legs” mantra, and
View them all and mint on their OpenSea page.
More from the press release:
“I have been working with the world’s leading athletes for a number of years and their performance data has always fascinated me,” says Allen. “Combining my passion for both Art and Cycling has created an amazing challenge that we are now ready to share with the world. The NFTs we offer at FUERZA are a partnership between the rider and artist, creating artwork that has emotional meaning.”
Jens Voigt added “I am happy and proud to be part of this project. FUERZA NFT’s combine in a unique way the power data from pro cyclists with the art of some incredible artists. We have a select group of athletes and I am sure that many people will be fascinated by this never-seen before combination of art and real data. Project FUERZA creates some of the most amazing pieces of art using my personal power data collected in races. The Tour de France, Tour of California and even my last race ever, the Hour Record. The outcome is pretty spectacular and quite unique.”
Zdenek Stybar said “I am really happy to be part of FUERZA. This is thinking out of the box and that’s absolutely what I love. I didn’t have to think too long if I wanted to be part of it. It’s a very unique project and I am excited to share the art with everyone.”
FUERZA artist Nick Hand spoke about creating some amazing art and working with the worlds leading cyclists…
“Being a part of this project has been an exciting journey,” adds artist Nick Hand. “It has been an interesting challenge taking something as clinical as power data and trying to meld it into a work of art. Working with world class athletes has been a joy and a once in a lifetime opportunity. I have just tried to match their atheltic prowess with equally powerful art.”
When you buy a FUERZA, you invest in a beautiful and individual piece of art with the rider’s data as the art or embedded in the image. You also receive a licence to view the actual data file from the ride, you do not own the data but you are able to view it!
FUERZA artists have taken the data from a specific ride, plus the ride story from the rider, the atmosphere at the race, the conditions on the day and much more to create a truly memorable, unique and collectible art piece. The NFTs are recording cycling history in a new, creative and exciting experience. When you see a FUERZA, you will get it. When you zoom in, you will discover something new. When you have it on your phone, and you look at it every day, you will know. When you come home and see your FUERZA on the wall on your LCD screen, you will know. The FUERZA is created to connect with you and your passion for art and cycling in a truly special way.
ProjectFUERZA.com
Tyler Benedict is the Founder of Bikerumor.com. He has been writing about the latest bikes, components, and cycling technology for 14 years. Prior to that, Tyler launched and built multiple sports nutrition brands and consumer goods companies, mostly as an excuse to travel to killer riding locations throughout North America.
Based in North Carolina, Tyler loves finding new travel adventures to share with his family and is always on the lookout for the next shiny new part to make his bikes faster and lighter. And, he’s totally gone down the NFT rabbit hole.
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“Save picture as”… aaand done. It’s mine now.
Try to use “save as picture” to access the power data, the athlete, etc. and…. fail.
Lots of pro power data on Strava. What’s the value prop here?
That’s the trouble with long-term marketing strategies: you have to pretend the Dorsey NFT never lost its owner almost $3M, the silly apes would have been all but completely siphoned off to North Korea if you couldn’t just rightclick-download them anyway (which you can), the crypto market as a whole wasn’t the volatile mess with a downward trend to rival the Zimbabwe Dollar that it is, and just hope people will still fall for it.
So you can nominally own a piece of digital art that further contributes to the hype surrounding the NFT bubble while also getting a power file that you may need to purchase WKO5 to view that you can’t share publicly all so you can support a project founded by a QAnon/Big Lie nutjob?
Don’t buy NFT’s from a confederate-sympathizing gun nut, how about.
Huh, humorously critical comments being removed extra quick on this article. I wonder how much crypto they promised bikerumor to publish this one and police the comments.
I respect the work Hunter Allen has done to improve training and develop meaningful power analysis tools, but this NFT thing is a monstrous fail. The image can easily be screenshot and enlarged with high quality using something like Photoshop or Illustrator, but the big negative is that the value of these NFTs seems to be dropping after purchase. What value is this going to hold 2 weeks, 2 months, or 2 years down the road?
And the power data: how is that useful?
BTW, I created an NFT of MvdP’s win on the second stage of last year’s TdF. The NFT portrays MvdP winning and includes a graceful curve that shows the angular position of his front valve stem over time.
a graceful curve that shows the angular position of his front valve stem over time
How dumb is the NFT crowd? Most of them are going to take this seriously.
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