Sports
Fernando Cheles on the Technical Side of L'Étape Brasil
From BMX to leading the country's largest amateur cycling event, technical director details safety, courses, and logistics.
Fernando Cheles combines his background in downhill, BMX, and sports science to design the courses for L’Étape Brasil. In a wide-ranging interview, he explains the engineering behind the races, risk management, and debates surrounding domestiques and anti-doping.
Organizing a cycling event for thousands of athletes on completely closed roads requires far more than merely marking distances on asphalt: it demands technical expertise, risk management, and the intuitive touch of someone who understands bikes from the inside out. As the technical director of L’Étape Brasil since its inception in 2014, Fernando Cheles brings a rich background spanning road racing, track, mountain biking, BMX, and downhill to direct operations for one of the country's premier amateur cycling series.
Holding a degree in Sports Science, Cheles merged his competitive experience with the study of motor skills and bike handling. In an interview on Na Roda do Stemma with Gisele Gasparotto, he detailed his evolution in the sport, his grassroots development work, and the complex logistics behind the routes in Cunha, Campos do Jordão, Rio de Janeiro, and Serra Negra.
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From BMX tracks and downhill to sports science
Fernando's relationship with cycling began on the streets of Assis (SP), where he joined the municipal team for the Regional and Open Games in road and track cycling. His passion for fast, aggressive riding led him to downhill, where he earned a podium finish at the Pan American Championships and placed among the top finishers at the traditional Descida das Escadas de Santos on Monte Serrat.
Alongside his racing career, Cheles pursued a degree in Sports Science in Londrina (PR). His scientific curiosity regarding flow and bike dynamics on BMX tracks—where riders generate speed without pedaling by pumping through obstacles—formed the foundation of his senior thesis on motor skills. Building on that work, he led the restoration of an abandoned track at the Londrina racetrack to found APABMX, a project that later became a national training center.
In São Paulo, he completed postgraduate studies and coached at Arena Radical under the Ari Torres Bridge, teaching everyone from public school students to adults and seniors how to develop balance and confidence on a bicycle.
The engineering and safety behind L'Étape Brasil
Leading technical operations for L'Étape Brasil since its debut edition in Cunha (2015), Cheles designs each event through the eyes of someone inside the peloton. Prior to any road closure decisions, he scouts the routes by car and by bike, assessing risk zones, braking areas, blind corners, and crowd flow dynamics for thousands of riders.
In Cunha, early editions presented the peloton with extreme challenges, including the climb up Serra do Mar right from the start and steep sections like Lavandário in scorching heat, resulting in high dropout rates. As the amateur racing scene matured, the route was redesigned to make it safer and more forgiving for beginners, moving the opening segment onto flatter roads before the decisive climbs.
Meanwhile, the event in Rio de Janeiro posed the greatest operational challenge in the race's history in Brazil. Staging a 100-kilometer route through a dense urban environment required over 15,000 barricades, two staff members at every pedestrian crosswalk along the South Zone beachfront, dedicated ambulance corridors to multiple hospitals, and precisely calculated bottlenecks to ensure the safe passage of 3,000 riders heading toward Tijuca National Park and Vista Chinesa.
Debates on pelotons, domestiques, and anti-doping
When asked about common topics in amateur cycling, Cheles contextualized the organization's technical approach to team tactics, pelotons, and substance testing. In his view, the use of domestiques by a tiny fraction of podium contenders reflects the historic dynamics of road cycling, even though drafting can reduce effort by up to 30%, acting almost like a mechanical advantage in age-group racing.
However, the director stressed that enforcement focuses primarily on bad faith: unregistered riders acting as 'bandit' domestiques to pull registered competitors. To curb this practice, the event utilizes visual identification and facial recognition technology to penalize both the unregistered rider and the competitor who benefited.
Regarding starting waves, the current setup prioritizes safety by seeding riders based on average speed history to prevent collisions between groups riding at starkly different paces. On doping control, the organization actively supports the presence of the Brazilian Anti-Doping Authority (ABCD) at its events, championing physical integrity and clean sport so cycling can be enjoyed in a healthy, balanced way.
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