Our journey
so far

ABOUT THE COMPANY

FulGaz is an operated business and part of the IRONMAN Group. With a head office located in Melbourne, Australia. At the time of writing, the full-time team is based in parts of Melbourne and Tasmania (another Australian State). Additional staff are in England. Beyond that, a team of over seventy keen contributors based in many countries throughout the world submits rides throughout the year.

While that might sound like a big team, all the core staff could still fit in a single Kombi van and head to the beach together. This makes FulGaz a dynamic, exciting team to work with and has allowed us to adapt to the ever-changing demands of the indoor cycling industry.

Everyone within the business has a genuine passion for riding or the technologies involved. While FulGaz is an indoor cycling app, we’re all about the joy of riding outside. We aim to be the closest thing to travelling to real locations around the world. When you use FulGaz, we want the app to get in the way as little as possible as the experience should be all about being in a location in real life, on your bike enjoying the ride.

A “customer first” approach is baked into our culture. It also gives us a far greater connection with our users and partners across the cycling industry.

OUR NAME

Our name a play on the German phrase Vollgas. (full throttle). This get’s translated as full gas and is generally used as European pro bike rider speak for “flat out” The ideal pronunciation can be heard in any of Jens Voight’s race commentaries or interviews.

OUR FOUNDER

FulGaz founder Mike Clucas was born in the UK and ended up travelling the world racing a bike. He never quite made it to a top pro team or the Olympics, but got close. As a Masters athlete, he won medals on the road and track at State, National and even World Championship level.

Settling in Australia in the 90’s with an obsession for finding ways to make people go faster, he went to university and studied Sport Science and Exercise Physiology.

The following decade was then devoted to coaching cyclists and triathletes; eventually setting up and up running the Victorian Institute of Sport Triathlon Program and working with the National Triathlon Team during the “golden years” of Australian Triathlon.

Through his time as a coach, his role gradually shifted from developing new coaching techniques to looking for money for the program. Eventually, he transferred these skills to the emerging world of software for the internet.

There then followed a period of overseeing the development of hundreds of websites and apps for other clients, until emerging technology trends and an accident on a dark, wet morning on Melbourne’s Beach Road combined to form the beginnings of FulGaz.

Surely  there had to be a way that technology could create a virtual way to ride in the places Mike wanted to ride instead of the places he was forced to ride?

By this point, Mike had bought one of the first KICKRs to land in Australia, and the next logical step was to build an app and try to recreate rides indoors. All of a sudden, all those years riding, studying, coaching and developing projects to tight budgets came into play.

FulGaz development started in mid 2014 as a regular Friday “Hackathon” by the team working on apps for other clients the rest of the time. This basically consisted of Mike saying “No, riding a bike doesn’t feel like that” until eventually it did feel just like riding outdoors.

Fast forward a few years, and the team that built apps for other clients has been disbanded (a whole other story in itself) and FulGaz is a fast growing, popular app with many thousands of users worldwide.