FORGET Around the World in 80 Days, Sam Sunderland plans to tear around the globe in less than 20… and on a motorbike.
The two-time Dakar Rally champion will leave Greenwich at 3.30am on September 5 in a bid to complete the fastest circumnavigation of the globe on two wheels.
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The time to beat is 19 days, eight hours and 25 minutes, set by British couple Kevin and Julia Sanders in 2002.
And if he’s going to top them, Sam must cover at least 18,000 miles across five continents on the same Triumph Tiger 1200 Rally Explorer.
That means riding roughly the length of Britain every day and spending as many as 17 hours in the saddle while battling exhaustion, changing climates, and time zones.
But getting to the start line has been hard enough for the 37-year-old.
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In January, Sam was preparing for Le Touquet, a brutal three-hour beach race in northern France featuring 1,500 riders, when he was thrown from his bike.
The Red Bull athlete said: “As I was flying through the air, I was like, ‘Oh dear, I’m going to land on my head.’
“I put my hands over my head and just heard a big CRUNCH when I landed.
“I was like, ‘Oh, that’s not good.’”
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The impact broke three vertebrae in his back – T1, T2 and T3 – and forced him to take it easy for three whole months.
He explained: “Everyone thinks they want to sit around and do nothing, but when you’re forced to do it, it’s not that cool.”
Doctors found the fractures were stable and Sam headed to Red Bull’s Athlete Performance Centre in Austria for rehabilitation.
Sam has spent his career taking risks on two wheels, winning the Dakar Rally in 2017 and 2022.
He joked: “I’ve either won or gone to the hospital, so why change now, right?”
With a partner and two children, the risks are now harder to ignore, while his mum is “always worried”.
But he said: “Where do you draw the line? I’m not going to sit in the house playing PlayStation all day. It’s not me.”
His love of bikes began on his dairy farmer grandad’s fields in Dorset, where he became hooked on the freedom.
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Now his two-year-old son Tommy is already “bike mad”.
Sam admitted: “I’d rather he was into something safer. It’s never smooth sailing.”
The route itself is punishing, he’s set to start with a ride from London to Istanbul before his bike is shipped to Thailand.
He will ride from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur, then clock up miles across New Zealand, Australia and North America before heading home from Casablanca.
The clock pauses while the bike crosses oceans and clears customs.
But the journey must remain continuous, move in one direction and pass through two antipodal points – places directly opposite each other on Earth.
Guinness no longer officiates the record because of the danger involved, but Kevin and Julia are up for his attempt.
They told him: “Records are made to be broken.”
His rehearsals have been punishing, including London to Istanbul in minus-two temperatures and a gruelling round trip to Florence.
There is little glamour in the daily routine either, with every stop reduced to a frantic cycle of ‘fuel up, eat, go’.
During one test, Sam grabbed a McDonald’s after riding from 4am until 1pm – with another EIGHT hours still to go.
Even after three or four podcasts, the hours drag on.
Sam joked: “I should learn a language. I need to come out of this with a skill.”
Red Bull are handling the complicated job of shipping the bike, clearing customs and securing visas, while ongoing unrest forced a planned Jeddah-to-Dubai leg to be scrapped.
Sam joked: “If it was left to me, we’d struggle to get out of England.”
But the ace is chasing more than a record.
He hopes the journey will cut through the world’s “doom and gloom” and get others out on adventures of their own.
The father-of-two also believes riding gives friends the space to have conversations they may otherwise avoid.
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Sam said: “I don’t know many dudes who phone up their mate and ask, ‘How are you feeling?’
“But when you’re out for a ride or at a coffee stop, those conversations happen. I think that’s a good thing.”