With only a handful of hours left to ride of what had been an epic journey across Europe, Christoph Strasser was almost able to see victory in the 2023 Transcontinental Race up ahead. After thousands of kilometres toiling through Europe, he was so close. And yet it wasn't that simple. It was pitch dark, the batteries in his lights had run down and he had a puncture to try to fix.
To cap it all, he already had lost his all-important GPS tracker, issued to all competitors. He may have been within shouting distance of the chequered flag but at that point, having stumbled around in woodland for nearly an hour looking for the offending item, victory seemed a long way off indeed.
