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March 12, 2007
Adventure Community Disputes Canadian's Human Powered Circumnavigation Claim
ATTN: Adventure writers, outdoor editors, book
editors.
Contacts: Jason Lewis (currently in the Gulf of Aden)
can be reached by email at team@expedition360.com
(please do not send attachments). Satellite phone
interviews can be arranged. Still pictures are
available.
Expedition documentary filmmaker Kenny Brown can be
reached in Los Angeles on +1 323 304 5364 or after
March 13 in Africa on +1 44 777 563 7004.
WORLDWIDE – Members of the adventure community today
called on Canadian Colin Angus to stop claiming to
have completed a human-powered circumnavigation of the
world.
Adventurer Jason Lewis, currently pedaling a boat
through the Gulf of Aden in an historic attempt to
complete the world’s first human-powered
circumnavigation, says he was shocked to hear the
title of Angus’ new book: “Beyond the Horizon _The
Great Race to Finish the First Human Powered
Circumnavigation of the Earth.”
Lewis, fellow explorers and the Guinness Book of World
Records agree that Angus failed to complete a
circumnavigation, because he did not enter the
Southern hemisphere nor touch at least one pair of
“antipodes,” opposite points along the planet’s
largest circle.
“Everyone in the adventure community, including Angus,
knows that he did not complete a circumnavigation,”
Lewis said. “I find it ludicrous, personally
distressing and damaging that he would publish his
book with a fraudulent claim right in the title.”
Famed explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes said he agreed with
Guinness in the debate.
"With regard to the current debate on what constitutes
a legitimate human powered circumnavigation, I would
agree with the Guinness Book as being the only fair
and impartial judge and setter of rules for such an
endeavour," Fiennes said.
Lewis, whose Expedition 360 is supported by patrons
including his Holiness the Dalai Lama and The Duke of
Gloucester, plans to finish his journey in October of
this year. The next leg involves cycling across
Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt and the Middle East.
Details of the circumnavigation dispute were splashed
across the letters page of the March edition of
National Geographic Adventure, with several explorers
refuting Angus’ claims to be a modern Magellan.
Canadian explorer Tim Harvey has echoed the adventure
community’s position. Harvey, who initially set off
with Angus, said he left the trek after discovering
Angus was planning “short cuts.”
“Colin Angus never even entered the Southern
Hemisphere, as every circumnavigation must,” Harvey
wrote in a letter to National Geographic Adventure.
“To honour his claim is like honouring the winner of a
race to the North Pole, even if the racer stopped at
the Magnetic North Pole, instead of the True North
Pole.”
Harvey also said he expects Lewis and Expedition 360
to become the first to complete a human-powered
circumnavigation.
“Meanwhile, another adventurer is doing the adventure
community proud by tackling the challenge the right
way, like a man of integrity,” Harvey said.
“Jason Lewis of England has used a pedal-boat across
the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and has relied on
human power every inch of the rest of the way. The
whole adventure community will lose credibility if
National Geographic allows itself to be hoodwinked by
Angus, and fails to honour the man with the integrity
to back his claim with a decade of challenge in both
hemispheres. Lewis shows us the inexpressible
difficulty of truly achieving the first ever
circumnavigation of the planet by human power.”
Angus journey was in many ways epic, but it was not a
circumnavigation.
Seattle-based adventurer Erden Eruc says Angus
conveniently dismissed the World Speed Sailing Records
Council (WSSRC) standard on around-the-world claims,
because his journey was not exclusively maritime. But
Angus used FAI (world air sports federation) standards
for around-the-world flights without ever having taken
flight by human power during his journey.
“Peer review is necessary to verify any achievement,”
Eruc says.
Lewis is on track to become the first person to
circumnavigate the world by human power in October of
this year.
Details of the National Geographic Adventure dispute
can be downloaded at http://www.expedition360.com/nat_geo_article.pdf
Posted by jason at March 12, 2007 1:34 PM