La Volta Globera: Dani Valls takes on Volta a Catalunya

At the end of this calendar year, the full La Volta Globera will be available on Dani Vall’s YouTube channel. In this documentary, cut in ten episodes, the Catalan cyclist takes on a challenge in which he eplicates the seven stages of the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya: 1,100 kilometres and more than 20,000 metres of elevation gain over seven days.

“The aim is to use the experience of an amateur cyclist to highlight the physical level, recovery capacity and performance of professional cyclists,” says Valls, who’s name on YouTube is Dani Vaiks. “In other words, to give amateur riders a better understanding of what it really means to ride stages of this level day after day and, through an experience that is closer to their own, help them appreciate what professionals do when they compete in an event such as the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya.”

The Catalan documentary maker, passionate about watching cycling races for as long as he remembers, continues: “for me, the Volta has always been ‘the race from home’. As a child, it was easier for me to follow the Tour or the Vuelta because they took place during my school holidays. But as I got older, the Volta had that sense of proximity. Sooner or later, it would pass through roads, villages or landscapes that you knew. That connection with the territory has always made it different.”

Today, it is probably the race he feel closest to. Preparing La Volta Globera has led him to study the stages and routes in great detail, to get to know the organisation better and, above all, to ride every stage following the same routes as the professional race and making the same transfers.

After having finished the Volta a Catalunya, does Valls now look differently at what the professionals endure? “Interestingly, I would say no. La Volta Globera was born precisely from the desire to highlight the extraordinary level of professional cyclists.”

“The challenge was not supposed to be about me discovering how good they are, but rather about using my experience as an amateur cyclist to help viewers better understand what it means to string together stages of this level at a professional pace. If the documentary manages to make someone watch the Volta afterwards and understand a little better what these cyclists are doing, then the project will have achieved a large part of its objective,” says Valls, who’s favourite cyclists of all times were Fernando Escartín and Marco Pantani.

La Volta Globera could count on the support from the organisation of the Volta itself, as well as the Generalitat de Catalunya propulsió grant, that has allowed Valls to give the project a more developed audiovisual dimension.