Georgia's Always On My Mind

07-23-2004, 03:06 PM

Georgian plans Olympic bike ride

At 65, Jumber Lezhava might be forgiven more than most for staying at home
to watch the Athens Olympics on television in his native Georgia.
However, the engineer from the ex-Soviet state famed for longevity plans
to pedal to the events by bike.

"I am keeping fit all the time and am ready to ride my bicycle to
Athens," he told reporters in the capital, Tbilisi.

But the Athens trip should be a mere spin - he once covered 264,000km
(164,042 miles) on a tour of the globe.

On that tour, which took him across 230 countries between 1993 and 2002,
Mr Lezhava used up nine bicycles and got listed in the Guinness Book of
Records.

He was aided at the time by the Russian foreign ministry, which instructed
its embassies across Africa to provide him with assistance, Russia's
Itar-Tass news agency reports.

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