![]() Going to chain a few episodes of Ibiza Weekender to get back on a level of literally not caring about the fates of the people I’ve just watched entertain me. They have also managed to finally take me to Step 5: genuinely caring how this one ends and the impact it will have on the lives of those who lived it. Not only do they have to document the entire round-the-houses trip each duo makes, they actually have to undergo it, too, and do it in a way that makes every missed bus feel like an urgent threat to you, the luxuriant viewer at home. I salute every member of the camera crew. Race Across the World is an astounding piece of TV because it somehow captures all the vibrant highs and exhausted lows of travel in all of their raw glory: the flooded hotels, the 18-hour coach trips, the moments of giving up, the bafflingly undesirable toilets, communicating in a nonsensical language halfway between English and Spanish but then also the late-night beers, the dancing with strangers, the helpful locals hand-drawing a map on the back of a notepad, the ecstatic feeling of a comfortable bed. I do not want to like a bunch of people sweating into backpacks and having the holiday of a lifetime. There is Dom and Lizzie, the annoyingly-good-looking-in-that-really-healthy-way siblings who lost touch somewhere between childhood and university, who are bickering their way from boat to bus Rob and Jen, married 33-year-olds from Reading hoping to overcome recent adversity by refinding themselves and each other uncle-nephew combo Emon and Jamiul, who are staggeringly inept, and keep missing crucial buses because they are looking the wrong way and Jo and Sam, my favourites, a 54-year-old and 19-year-old mother-son pair who guide each other tenderly through tantrums, distractions and the fact that he has seemingly never bought a bag of crisps unassisted in his life. To recap: we are three weeks in, one couple down, nobody has a map or even a cursory grasp of Spanish and, somehow, they have rattled along from Mexico to Colombia without spending much more than a grand. Runners-up Jen and Rob offered some of the most iconic moments of the race, with their bus-station spats and checkpoint meltdowns. “It’s the book that should have been written back then, “John says.So Race Across the World feels wrong. In a time when travel was not possible, this 12,000km journey through Central & South America offered all of us the armchair escapism we so desperately needed. John’s new book explores more deeply the motivations that made the Marathon possible and the ambitions that drove its success. The blow by blow coverage of the great race is still available, occasionally, on e-bay. It was called The Bright Eyes of Danger ( from the Robert Louis Stevenson poem Youth and Love:1 : “ The untented Kosmos my abode, I pass a willful stranger, My mistress still the open road, And the bright eyes of danger.”). “We were so focused on moving this great race across the world at break-neck speed that we hardly noticed the impact it was creating or the barriers it was breaking just to exist.”Īfter the Marathon John produced his first book, co-written with competitor David McKay, Australia’s first national touring car champion. “We all underestimated the lasting contribution and vast influence of the marathon when it occurred, “ John said. Race Across The World Season 1 (1) 2021 TV-PG In this real-world adventure, five teams of two are racing from point A to B - without flying. John Smailes was a young journalist at the time covering the race for the Daily Telegraph, one of the event’s promoters. In the first episode, the teams set off from Mexico City a gargantuan metropolis and the largest Spanish. It was more than a car race, more than a rally, more than the trials that opened outback Australia only a decade before, it was the world’s most grueling test of driver and vehicle. Synopsis Race Across the World - Season 2. Unimaginable now in either concept or execution, the marathon captured the attention of the countries through which it passed, and of the world, as it created front page news. The others lay in ruin along its 10,000mile route. In 1968 98 competitors stormed out of London on the world’s greatest automotive adventure, the London-Sydney Marathon, the most ambitious and epic car race ever staged.įour weeks later they arrived in Sydney or at least half of them did.
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