‘I wasn’t so smart’ – Ultra-distance rider Sofiane Sehili after EurAsia World Record bid ends with 50 days in Russian prison

French ultra-distance rider Sofiane Sehili has recognised that he “wasn’t so smart” after his attempt to cross the Chinese-Russian border as part of his EurAsia World Record bid ended with him spending nearly two months in prison.

Having left Lisbon on July 8 and when he was just hours away from reaching his final destination of Vladivostok on the Asian coastline, Sehili was arrested for crossing the frontier illegally.

“I tried to cross the frontier legally, but unfortunately that wasn’t possible that day,” Sehili, who had already been through 17 different countries, explained to AFP. once he had made it back to France last weekend.

“That would have been possible the following day, but I wouldn’t have had the chance to beat the record. So I decided to try to go through it illegally.”

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Having got over to Russia from China, he first rode for several hours through “a very thick forest. But then I told myself that enough was enough and that I wasn’t very smart to have tried to do that.

“Rather naively, I thought that if I told the [Russian] authorities it had all been unintentional, I’d [at least] have a chance of getting sent back to China quite quickly. But given the current situation in Russia being so tense, that didn’t work.”

Sehili said he had been well treated in the Russian prison and that he had had medical and legal attention throughout.

“It’s not a place where they pick you up and throw you in a jail and you’ve got no idea of what’s happening,” he told AFP after being released on October 23 and flying back to France via Thailand.

Following Sehili’s failed attempt, the EurAsian crossing World Record will remain in the possession of its current holder, Germany’s Jonas Deichmann and with a time of 64 days and two hours.

Sofiane Sehili during his failed EurAsian Record bid (Image credit: Edgar Santos)