A frightening kidnap attempt prompted round-the-world cyclist James Bowthorpe to make a rushed departure from Iran in the early hours of the morning, skipping Pakistan and continuing his challenge in India.
The 31-year-old, who is attempting to beat the round-the-world cycling record, is still on track to shave a day off record-holder Mark Beaumont’s time, despite the incident, which left him “freaked out”, according to his girlfriend.
Speaking to road.cc today, James’ partner Nadja Coyne, who is part of his support team in the UK, said the full details would be published shortly in his blog, but confirmed there had been an incident.
She said: “He was in Iran and some people tried to bundle him into a car, and he got a bit freaked out.”
James flew out of Tehran and into Amritsar, India, and he is now continuing his journey.
Hints of a problem could be detected on James’ Twitter feeds from Iran. On Sunday, May 3, he wrote “If you know the right people (Edwin, pictured) you can use visa to buy a flight from Tehran at 1am. Out!”
Here are the pictures from James' blog that illustrate his sharp exit.
Nadja said: “It takes such a lot of energy cycling that far every day and the routine of it, setting up camp every night, takes a lot of energy. He’s not actually finding the cycling too awful. It’s not like he’s in a lot of pain. He hasn’t got any saddle sores.
“The worrying was the straw that broke the camel’s back – the extra drain on his energy that he couldn’t deal with. He decided, I’m going to get to a place where I feel safer.”
Nadja was alerted to the problem when she received a message on her phone from James, while she was attending a wedding. She said: “I had no phone reception so I was going into the middle of a field trying to make calls. Luckily one of our friends is a correspondent for ABC.” She said the friend had contacts in Islamabad lined up to help James, but in the end he didn’t need it.
James leapfrogged Pakistan, flying into Amritsar, India, and is now happily continuing his journey down the Great Trunk Road, one of South East Asia’s oldest and longest roads, which is providing him with some flat and fast terrain. He had always planned to skip Pakistan, because of the unstable situation there, and James and the support team are waiting to hear from Guinness World Records to confirm his route change doesn’t invalidate his record-attempt.
Nadja confirmed James is slightly behind the punishing schedule he set for himself, but still on track to beat the record by at least a day.
James is attempting to raise £1.8million for research into Parkinson’s Disease.
Follow James’ tweets here and read his blog
after I said that if they wouldn't tell me the outcome of a submission I would have to make an FOI request for it...
Did Road.cc miss this news item? Putney fatal collision 2 November 2024.
In Gloucestershire I've been having an email dialogue with Robert Vestey who has recently decided that close passes will get an advisory letter...
Lidl have a window poster emblazoned, "Black Friday. Starts Sunday".
I take "rat running" to be taking shortcuts through streets which aren't really suitable (at least when lots of people do the same thing)....
More likely, the fork offset was increased to offset the gain in trail effected by the use of fatter tires.
Note that only one of them was actually used by him as a race bike (the 2010 Madone) and that not in his "glory" years, I'm sure one of his Tour...
You have to wonder how many drivers are merrily writing-off their cars this way. Nearly all the coverage is flooding related - Chippenham and...
Prudhomme is the worst thing in pro cycling - even worse than the green washing and red washing.
Where did you read the minimum tariff is 5 years? Sentencing Guidelines says it's 2 years (minimum disqualification is 5 years)....