SWP BEACON - David Rigney (Knights Of Suburbia)

In this episode Marcus sits down with his long term friend David Rigney who is the founder of cycling community Knights Of Suburbia.

Around 2014 David semi retired from playing Australian Rules Football and decided to take up cycling as a way of keeping his fitness up. From there he quickly got some mates involved and created a little club called FTC - Footballers Turned Cyclists. With the competitive juices flowing over from their previous life as footballers Dave and his mate Russ Lee decided to try and create a team to compete in the local cycling critical races. 

FTC was evolving quickly and Dave realised that the community that they were creating was having a positive impact by bringing guys together, so they could enjoy each others company and feel safe to share some of the challenges that they were facing in life. It dawned upon them that what they were creating was something special and the purpose of the group shifted to provide a space for people to connect, a safe haven for those with mental health concerns and also a way to create awareness around the challenges society is facing with mental health issues.

Whilst this evolution was taking place the group was rebranded to Knights Of Suburbia, which better reflected the quest that they were on to bring the local community together through cycling, to face the challenges of mental health.

Knights Of Suburbia (also known as KOS) has partnered with Love Me Love You, a foundation set up to support people with mental health issues and through their promotional activities have raised up around $500,000.00 to support the cause. This has been through various activities with a yearly event titled 'Ride With Me' being a significant contribution.

Knights Of Suburbia participation has grown from a local club based in the North East of Melbourne to now having group rides happening weekly all of the country. 

Our chat goes through the journey of KOS but also, importantly, the magnitude of the impact that community has made to the lives of many individuals. 

It has been a pleasure to watch the growth of Knights Of Suburbia and personally I am hoping to get more involved through the addition of some running initiatives.

If you want to learn more about Knights Of Suburbia you can find them here:
https://knightsofsuburbia.com 

Enjoy!