For the past two months, Sofiane Sehili has been riding his way toward a herculean goal: a world record for the crossing of Eurasia by bicycle, from Cabo da Roca in Portugal to Vladivostok in Russia, almost 18,000 km away. The French ultracyclist has a deep record of staggering feats of endurance; he’s a three-time winner of the Silk Road Mountain Race (2021-2023), and has also won bikepacking races like the Tour Divide (2022), Atlas Mountain Race (2020) and Inca Divide (2019). But the Eurasia record is on another scale entirely, crossing 17 countries across Earth’s largest continental landmass, from its westernmost point to the far east of Asia.
For 61 days, Sehili’s ride was tracking on schedule, averaging close to 300 kilometres a day through western Europe, across to the Balkan states, through Turkey and then an endless succession of former Soviet states, Mongolia, and China. Vlogs posted on Sehili's Instagram every couple of days kept his 50,000 followers updated on his Eurasian adventure, with what seemed an increasingly inevitable result: he was on target to beat the existing record, held by Jonas Deichmann of Germany, who in mid-2017 connected the two points over 64 days.
On the last day of riding, however, Sehili’s journey came to a premature end. The dot-tracker of his ride shows Sehili approaching the border between China and Russia at the small town of Sanchakou, and then a few minutes later turning back to retrace his steps toward Dongning. The dot bobbled north to Suifenhe (another border town) on backroads, before it came to a standstill. Days later, his tracker is still shown in Suifenhe, although Sehili’s exact whereabouts have not been publicly announced.
The updates that have emerged, however, are troubling.
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