Cândido Barbosa is the ″owner″ of the barriers in the Volta a Portugal
Popular 25-stage winner created Strong Speed, a company that assembles race starts and finishes using innovative methods, with just 20 men and protecting the environment.
“I’m preparing something that admired the race: the spectacle for the public safety, the spectacle for the public safety, doing as C marks, barriers and podiums have the maximum and continue to invest in cycling in the maximum safety.” one of the historics of the Volta a Portugal, in which he won 25 stages (only Alves Barbosa, with 34, has more), won eight times on points and had two second places (2005 and 2007) and a third (2006) overall. Now 47 years old, he owns Strong Speed, a four-year-old company that assembles and arrives using innovative methods.
The men of the famous “Rocket of Edges”, in addition to presenting podiums, barriers and signs for Global Media races, such as the JN Grand Prix, the Volta ao Alberga, the Classic Close of Alberga and the Closed Opening Test, Algarve the year at the Track Festival, also equipping athletics events, the World Bike Tour and the Food Festival and Sorriso Mission, Sonae events.
“I always liked the area and the way of playing, between this councilor of the Câmara de Paredes, between this one buying a podium truck in a solvency. I arranged it and everyone rented it. Today I have four trucks, two podiums and 2300 meters of inclined barriers. A logistics that allows organizing races from A to Z, with departures, arrivals, crossing goals and ethics”, explains Cândido to O JOGO.
“When he left the chamber, he cried for two, to take this business more seriously. Just that truck, a tractor, semi-trailers and 200 degrees, today I have 840 degrees, two semi-trailers for transport, three buyers. to mechanize the assembly of departures and arrivals”, he also reveals.
Cândido Barbosa, seeking to innovate, went “to see the Vuelta and the Giro, to understand how to work”. Here, there is no garbage that can be cut down. It’s all of them in the midst of scavenger hunts like us dead.
The method allows Strong Speed, which has three people permanently, using only 20 men in the Volta a Portugal. It’s a different system, now there are pallets that load the crates and trucks load them. We don’t need the brute force to measure barriers on trucks; the publicity never lands, it goes directly from the grid to a van. This is what is done at the Giro, saving time, human resources and people’s wear and tear. and we watch over the barriers”, adds Cândido.
Patent barriers that do not hurt cyclists
Cândido Barbosa’s biggest concern is with the safety of cyclists – “We have 100 weight to put at the feet of the barriers; in Serra da Estrela and at the Vila Nova Observatory, with the wind, it wasn’t easy, but no barrier has yet fallen “, he says – and prepares an unprecedented advance.
“For the future we will have a model, already designed and that will be patented, to have protection in the barriers. So, the athletes, if they have a fall, don’t have that big shock that can hurt them even if the tar. a model that avoids the use of plastics”, revealed the now entrepreneur.
Experience helps design trajectories
“The designation Strong Speed came from a joke, it is a “Fast Force” that refers to my genetics as a cyclist, but which has its logic in the way we operate. Long and riding again, so we need to have strength and be fast” Cândido Barbosa, remembering that the past gives some advantages.
Castelo Branco, with the lines defined and organized in the final paths. details that, having been on the field as an athlete, I can operate differently from other service providers”, guarantees Cândido.