Norton Rose Fulbright was the legal category ‘team to beat’ again this year at the Below the Belt Pedalthon, having won two years in a row. But it proved a tough feat for the other seven law firms after NRF came out on top yet again.
“Its fun but its competitive fun,” Norton Rose partner Richard G Lewis told
Australasian Lawyer.
“You’re in a peloton, you’ve all got your team shirts, and you can see
Clayton Utz next to you,” he joked.
“It gets quite competitive.”
Teams have three hours to complete as many laps at the track at Eastern Creek, all in the name of raising funds for cancers below the belt. Around 250 riders rode on Tuesday.
“Its hard work, three hours is a long time to be hammering round there,” Lewis said.
“But because we wanted to win it, none of us stopped, we just kept going the whole time.
“Some people stop and recover and then go back out there but all our team just basically kept going non-stop for three hours.”
With three competitive cyclists in the Norton Rose partnership, some athletic fresh blood and some pretty serious training this year, it was a tough team to out-lap.
“Two weeks ago I was in the world championships for my age in Perth so I’ve been training for months,” Lewis said. He rode alongside Norton Rose partners Tim Mornane and Rob Buchannan, as well as Kirk Warrick, Tom Bramah and Sam Purcell.
But King & Wood Mallesons, Clayton Utz, Baker & McKenzie, Gilbert + Tobin,
Jones Day, Johnson Winter & Slattery and Kemp Strang all put up a tough fight in the legal category.
“It’s great to do something involving exercise as well while raising money for a good cause and we certainly intend to carry on supporting this charity in the future,” Lewis said.
“It’s a really good cause and they’ve raised a lot of money.”
ANZUP, which raises money to fund clinical trials for suffers of cancer, raised around $250,000 at Tuesday’s event.
