AROUND THE WORLD… IN 120 IRON-DISTANCE TRIATHLONS
It will come as no surprise that, given the cover of this issue and the image to your left, Jonas Deichmann has been renamed ‘the German Forrest Gump’. In 14 Hollywood-mirroring months, the 34-year-old from Stuttgart cultivated a Gump-esque beard after swimming, cycling and running across the planet and collecting a fan group of runners as he crossed Mexico. But just who is Jonas Deichmann? And whatever possessed him to take on such a feat?
A multiple world-record holder, speaker and adventurer, Deichmann first caught the adventure bug in university, when he completed a two-year, around-the-world bikepacking journey. Ever since, he’s thrown himself into extreme, record-breaking endurance challenges. For example…
In 2017, he became the first cyclist in history to ride across Eurasia, travelling the entire 14,331km landmass of Europe and Asia from west to east in just 64 days. The next year, Deichmann cycled 23,000km across the Americas in 97 days, from the Arctic Ocean in north Alaska to Argentina’s Ushuaia, AKA the ‘End of the World’.
Ever restless, Deichmann then completed an ambitious Cape to Cape expedition in 2019, cycling 18,000km from Norway’s Cape North to Cape Town in South Africa, overcoming violent conflicts, food poisoning and police harassment to complete his mission 72 days later - that’s an average of 250km a day.
