By Guy Faulconbridge and Anton Kolodyazhnyy<\/p>\n
MOSCOW (Reuters) -A Russian court freed a French long-distance cyclist on Thursday after finding him guilty of illegally crossing the country’s border with China while trying to break the world record for cycling across the Eurasian landmass.<\/p>\n
Sofiane Sehili, a French citizen who describes himself as an “ultra-endurance racer and adventure cyclist”, was freed by the court in Russia’s Far Eastern district and exempted from paying a 50,000-rouble ($615) fine, a court in Primorye said. <\/p>\n
The court said Sehili had admitted his guilt. He was seen standing in a cage in the courtroom wearing his cycling shoes. <\/p>\n
“Sofiane Sehili was released from custody in the courtroom,” the court said. <\/p>\n
“The physical evidence in the case: a foreign passport, a copy of an electronic visa, an e-book, two mobile phones, a video camera, a navigator and a bicycle have been returned to their rightful owner,” it said.<\/p>\n
Sehili’s posts on social media showed that he was cycling from China to Russia in early September. He did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Russian media reported that Sehili was detained in the Far Eastern district of Primorye in early September and was accused of crossing the border illegally.<\/p>\n
Sehili began his odyssey on July 1 near Lisbon – often cycling more than 300 km (190 miles) a day – while passing through Turkey, Iran, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China and finally Russia. He intended to finish in the Russian Far Eastern port of Vladivostok.<\/p>\n
He was trying to beat the current record for cycling across Eurasia, held by Jonas Deichmann from Germany, who did the vast journey in 64 days, 2 hours and 26 minutes, according to the Guinness World Records. <\/p>\n
His lawyer was quoted by state-owned news agency RIA as saying the cyclist had been satisfied while in detention, though he complained of unusual food and a lack of regular showers.<\/p>\n
According to BikePacking, a resource for all-terrain cycling and backpacking, Sehili left his job as a freelance journalist writing reviews because he no longer got a kick out of it and became a messenger and then a long-distance racer.<\/p>\n
“I’m going to ride until I can’t,” BikePacking quoted him as saying. “Until there is an ocean in front of me.” <\/p>\n
“I am going to meet hundreds of people and despite not understanding their languages, I know there will be great encounters; it is an adventure before anything else.”<\/p>\n
($1 = 81.3000 roubles)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Anton Kolodyazhnyy; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Guy Faulconbridge and Anton Kolodyazhnyy MOSCOW (Reuters) -A Russian court freed a French long-distance cyclist on Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-233837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}