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The great Australian cyclist Alf Goullet and his partner rode a staggering 4,442 km (2,759 miles) in the six-day event at Madison Square Garden in 1914. That’s near enough the width of the USA, from ‘sea to shining sea’. It’s 600 miles (966 km) further than the modern Tour de France, which takes three weeks. It remains the record today. Goullet wrote after the event, ‘My knees were sore, I was suffering from stomach trouble, my hands were so numb I couldn’t open them wide enough to button my collar for a month, and my eyes were so irritated I couldn’t, for a long time, stand smoke in a room.’ Note no buttaching. Goullet won fifteen six-day races including eight at Madison Square Garden. He lived to be 103.
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