Story of the Founder

Some achievements deserve more than a wall. Most get less.

I didn't set out to build a frame company.

I set out to solve something that had been bothering me since the moment I crossed my first finish line.

After my first marathon in November 2022, I came home, took off the medal, and put it somewhere. I was 41. I had trained for months. I had crossed a line I wasn't sure I could reach. And I cried when I did — not because I was sad, but because I was proud in a way I hadn't felt in years. The kind of pride that catches you completely off guard at kilometre 42 when you realise: I actually did it.

And then the days passed. Life continued. And at some point I realised I couldn't locate the medal. Not metaphorically. I genuinely did not know where it was.

The training was real. The sacrifice was real. The emotion at that finish line was real. And the only physical proof of all of it had simply disappeared into the house.

That feeling stayed with me longer than I expected.

I'm Manuel Melkonian. I'm Lebanese, based in Beirut, and that feeling is the reason VO2 Atelier exists.

I've been doing this a long time.

Athletics

Between 1996 and 1998 I competed in the Lebanese Athletics Championships across multiple disciplines. Long jump. Triple jump. The 4×100 relay. I stood on podiums in Beirut in a sport that asks everything of your body and gives you nothing but the result. That was my first real understanding of what it means to earn something.

Marathon

In November 2022, at 41, I ran my first marathon. 4:11:50. I crossed that finish line and I wept. Openly. Without embarrassment. Because nothing in the years between athletics and that moment had asked that much of me — and I had answered.

In November 2023, I ran my second. 4:07:36. Because you show up again. That's the point.

In January 2024 I joined a triathlon training team and discovered a different category of effort entirely — one that required me to swim, cycle, and run on separate days, often before the city had woken up.

In October 2025, I crossed the finish line of my first Half Ironman in Greece. 6:17:09.

Standing there I thought about every medal I'd accumulated over the years. The athletics podiums. The marathons. All of it. And I felt something unexpected — not pride this time. Frustration. Not at what I'd achieved. At where it all was. Scattered. Stored without ceremony. Some of it in places I'd have to search to find.

The achievement was permanent. The way I was treating it wasn't.

That frustration became VO2 Atelier.

Every frame we build is made by hand in Beirut — for the specific person and the specific achievement going inside it. Nothing mass-produced. Nothing sitting in a warehouse.

This exists because I needed it. And because I know I'm not the only one.