I was a little confused by some postings I found on the internet about what sounded like quite an impressive celebratory feat of stamina, until I realised there were two events involved. They both occur at more or less the same time, between the same two cities and both involve people using the same mode of transport but they are independent and separate.
The first is a cycle journey from Olympia to Beijing which is being undertaken by a 12 member team from Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Poland and other unknown places. They departed Olympia on Wednesday, 20th February 2008 and already are out of the country. Click here and here for press releases about their trip and click here for a blog written by one of the team members. Once I had found one piece of information about this venture it was easy to find others . . . . but the next was not quite as easy.
The difficulties are probably mine, due to translation, but also possibly because this team hasn’t taken as much trouble to publicise their venture. The second adventure involves a team of eight Chinese students from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, who are planning to cycle from Athens to Beijing. If the information found is correct they spent more than one year preparing for the trip, selecting team members, training and planning. According to the thread on this forum the planned departure date was 29th February but according to this news bulletin they only arrived in Athens on the 7th March and departure will be some time in the following week. Maybe there was some delay or possibly one of the reports is not quite right. However, either way there will soon be two groups of riders on their way to Beijing and both planning to arrive on 8.8.2008, the opening day of the 2008 Games.
It will be interesting to see how the groups fare on their travels so I’ll be keeping a look-out for further information. Will this develop into a race, or will the groups meet up somewhere in the Taklamakan Desert and tow each other into Beijing? We’ll see, meanwhile good luck to all of them.
UPDATE – for information about these groups go the Athens to Beijing 2008 website. Click here to go direct.
Filed under: 2008, Athens, Beijing, China, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, athens to beijing, cyclist, games, olympic, riding, travel | Tagged: celebration, Chinese, crosscountry, group, Huazhong University, international, team, tour
