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
Straight into the sun is perhaps an exaggeration, but at that time it would be about ESE, and there are bits of the road which head roughly SSE, so...
7 October was just a bit of harmless fun until the "msm" ramped it up.
It's not censored if you just pirate it
an example of Kesgraves "best cycling infrastructure in the country" https://maps.app.goo.gl/GsCMbzDUTPdq59qS9
They are not going full gas at every point. They would destroy themselves. And tactics, they save themselves for when effort is really needed....
It turns out that that is national police policy. We found out from this process that there is national 'secured by design' policy which causes...
Been available for quite a while, full GRX mechanical 12 speed. Probably around the same time as 105 mechanical 12 speed if I were to guess.
Less harmful citrus degreaser is easy to find at £8 or less for 5 litres. Works ok for me, even diluted up to 4:1. Both paraffin and white spirit...
Nope, it's to keep your straps down and quieter. Plus most sunglasses are polycarbonate and aren't going to shatter like glass anyway
And, more seriously, where's the coverage of the closure of the cycle lane which forces you to cycle on the Totton bypass.