Decathlon's The Breakaway: prison inmates race Belgium's justice team on Zwift

At Oudenaarde prison, inmates had ridden stationary rollers for eight years but raced no one, and internet access is normally banned. Decathlon's stated purpose is making sport accessible to all, so BBDO Belgium proposed taking that 'all' literally — behind bars.

Belgium's first eCycling team for prisoners: six inmates train on Zwift and race a live event against judges, magistrates and the justice minister.

Six inmates formed Team Breakaway, training two to three times a week for six months on Zwift with sanctioned internet access. In September 2021 they raced a team led by justice minister Vincent Van Quickenborne over 14 miles of the virtual Champs-Élysées, broadcast live on Decathlon's Facebook page.

European media and the cycling press covered the race and Decathlon counted millions of impressions. The inmates lost by a small margin, the minister pledged to expand e-cycling across Belgium's prisons, and the project took the PR Grand Prix at Epica 2021.

In the Belgian prison of Oudenaarde, inmates had pedalled stationary rollers for eight years — a release valve, but a solitary one. The prison's director, Pieter Van Caeneghem, was candid about what competition could do: inmates would get a goal to work toward and a new connection with the outside world, and the outside world would be startled by their condition. There was one structural obstacle: prisoners may not use the internet, and modern cycling races now happen largely inside the virtual platform Zwift.

Decathlon Belgium and BBDO Belgium built the project around that exception. Six detainees formed Team Breakaway — 'a break, literally and figuratively, from the role you have every day', in the director's words — and trained two to three times a week, two hours a session, for six months, interacting with thousands of Zwift riders worldwide. In September 2021 they lined up against a team of justice officials led by minister Vincent Van Quickenborne and raced 14 miles of the virtual Champs-Élysées, live on Decathlon's Facebook page.

The lawmen won by a small margin, but both sides described the race as transformative. One inmate, in the case film, recalled people cheering him on when his leg hurt: 'It was really beautiful.' Frederik Clarysse, associate creative director at BBDO Belgium, insisted the project had become 'more than just a communications stunt', and Van Quickenborne said sport's mental-health benefits 'also apply to detainees' and pledged to expand the format across Belgium's penal system. Epica's jury of marketing journalists gave it the 2021 PR Grand Prix.

It pushed the brand's stated purpose — sport for all — to its logical edge: 'all' including the people society locks away.

Competition, not equipment, was the real donation; the prison already had the rollers, and Decathlon topped up gear, trainers and a live broadcast.

The opponent list wrote the headline by itself: judges, magistrates and a justice minister racing inmates is news, not a press release.

The one sanctioned internet exception carried outsized motivational weight — the prison's sport officer said inmates were deeply grateful to be part of the online-sport boom.

The opponent was the gift. The inmates already had bikes; what they lacked was a race and an audience. Purpose campaigns land when the brand grants something the institution itself withholds.

BBDO described The Breakaway as an ongoing project rather than a one-off stunt, and the justice minister committed to extending it across Belgium's penal system, arguing detainees should 'come out of prison better than they went in'. The story travelled through European media and the cycling press, giving Decathlon millions of impressions and its place in the cultural conversation on sport-as-social-force. At Epica 2021 the project won the PR Grand Prix, judged by an international jury of marketing journalists.