Endurance Documentary · Charity Campaign · 2026
2112
One question, twelve days. How many stages of the Tour de France could James Golding ride for Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity? The answer was seventeen.
01 — The Ride
One question,
twelve days
The professionals ride the Tour de France across three weeks, with two rest days built in. 2112 asked a simpler question: given twelve days and no rest days at all, how far into that route could one rider get?
James Golding set out from Barcelona on the morning of stage one and rode the route consecutively. The Pyrenees. The heat. The Massif Central. The Vosges. The Alps. He reached the end of stage seventeen. Nothing skipped, nothing cherry-picked. He rode until he stopped.
Every kilometre was for Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity. Not a badge on the jersey, the reason the ride existed. James was riding for the children and families at GOSH, the ones facing their own mountains every day with no finish line in sight, and that framing shaped every piece of content that came off the road. Dean Downing rode alongside him on selected days, joining for 50 to 60km at a time.
There is unfinished business here. Those last stages are still out there.
“The man who refused to die.”
Red Bull, on James Golding
Two cancer diagnoses, told he would never walk again, and since then a world record holder. The reputation arrives before he does, which meant the films never had to sell the story. They only had to be honest about the day.
02 — The Approach
Cut in the camper,
live by midnight
There was no edit suite. There was a campervan. Footage was ingested and cut on the move between stages, then finished in whatever hotel room we reached that night. The reel went live before the next morning's start.
That constraint shaped the work more than any creative decision did. A twelve-day ride with no rest days leaves no catch-up time, so anything not finished that night was never getting finished. It meant shooting with the edit already in mind, and being ruthless about what actually earned a place.
The format rotated deliberately so the series never blurred: hype cuts for the bookend days, a slower cinematic grade held back for the days that earned it, raw POV for the long flat grind. Same spine every day, different skin.
03 — What Came Off The Road
Eight films, twelve days
Daily recap reels
Eight vertical films cut and delivered across the twelve days, each built to a locked six-beat structure.
The final reel
The closing film, carrying the summary from James and Dean once the riding was done.
Daily photography
Edited stills delivered from the road for social, press and GOSH fundraising use.
Cut on the move
Ingested and assembled in the campervan between stages, finished in the hotel that night.
Vertical first
Framed and graded for phones from the outset, not cropped down from landscape afterwards.
GOSH throughout
The fundraising ask built into the structure of every cut rather than bolted on at the end.
04 — The Final Reel
The wrap up
The closing film, cut once the riding stopped, with James and Dean summarising twelve days in their own words.
05 — Daily Reels
Shot by day,
cut by night
Eight films across the twelve days. Four of them here.
06 — The Numbers
Seventeen stages, no rest days
Twelve consecutive days with nothing built in to recover. The professionals ride these stages across three weeks with two rest days.
The height of Everest, four and a half times over.
Total ascent vs 8,849 m
40,000 m climbed in twelve days. Each mark is one full ascent of Everest.
The content
Eight films cut on the road while the fund was still open. Instagram rated the campaign High Performing, and the number that matters most is the last one.
07 — Stills
From the mountains
Click any frame to open it full size.
Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity
The fund is still open
James rode for the children and families at GOSH, the ones facing their own mountains every day with no finish line in sight. Every donation still goes to them.
Got a ride, a race
or an expedition to film?
Fairford Studios is a sports and endurance film and photography studio based in Milton Keynes, working with brands and athletes across the UK and Europe.
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