What started out as a joke made by his partner, Tiffany Cromwell, a professional cyclist who is retiring after this weekend’s UCI Gravel World Championships in Australia, turned into an unexpected epic adventure.
“‘Hey, you could just ride from there,’” Valtteri Bottas recalled Cromwell telling him. “'It's not that far.’ Then I was like, 'hmm, maybe I could.'”
Bottas is an accomplished cyclist, using it as his main escape from F1. In August, he even qualified for his age group at the UCI Gravel World Championships, but will not take part due to the clash with the Singapore F1 race. But, if planned correctly, he believed he could pull off the journey from Kuala Lumpur.
“I obviously had to check the distance, how the roads are, the timings,” Bottas explained. “And then (I) just made a solid plan for each day. All the routes were planned out.”
Relying on local knowledge was crucial. Bottas had two Malaysian support riders who knew the best route to take — not the most direct one, preferring off-road gravel sections — as well as a support vehicle.
Bottas saw a king cobra, and had to carefully evade a large python that was going across his path. He’d been warned about wild boar, but the majority of wildlife he encountered were snakes and monkeys, as well as large lizards. One decided to sit in the middle of the road, forcing Bottas to bunny-hop over it.
The only moment of mild threat was when Bottas was chased by a dog, but he was able to quickly pedal away. He also got stuck behind a group of cows at one stage on a small track road before they eventually moved out of his path.
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