TWO committed cyclists will stop in Newcastle overnight on their 16,500km Japan to New Zealand ride for the Rugby World Cup (RWC).
Ron Rutland and Adam Nunn collected the RWC match whistle from Tokyo, the site of the previous world cup, on March 14.
Over 200 days, the South African pair are cycling to Auckland where they will deliver the whistle to the match referee at this year's opening game.
"Just getting to the start line was a big challenge," Mr Rutland said.
"Everything with COVID going around, the amount of times we had to change our plans and routes. Particularly with China being closed.
"We are 10 countries in now. Been on the road 171 days, cycled 13 or 14,000 kilometres. So it has been a wild adventure."
The expedition aims to raise $US200,000 for sports for development charity ChildFund Rugby, which operates largely in south-east Asia.
It has so far taken them to Japan, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Timor Leste, Fiji and Australia.
"The original plan was cycling through China, so we would have cycled down from Tokyo to Osaka, caught a ferry to Shanghai and then cycled down to Vietnam," he said.
"But it became obvious even as late as last year that China was never going to open up so we had to park those ambitions.
"We spent a couple of weeks in Japan which was amazing and then flew to Vietnam. Specifically Hanoi where ChildFund Rugby are based.
"Everything went to plan cycling through Vietnam, down through Cambodia and again we visited a ChildFund rugby site."
Due to "some bureaucratic reason" the pair were forced to fly from Cambodia to Thailand. After cycling and island-hopping their way through to Timor Leste, they visited another ChildFund site.
"ChildFund use rugby as a mechanism to teach young people life skills. When you see it on the ground, the impact just hits in you in the chest and takes your breath away," he said.
"They aren't there to find the next rugby superstar or grow the game, it's not their mandate."
Mr Rutland said a key focus for for the charity is empowering young women.
"A lot of these countries young girls very often don't finish high school," he said.
"The reason they have chosen rugby is because if you go to these communities and take a soccer ball or basketball the boys will just say 'that's a boy's sport'.
"If you take this weird shaped oval ball and tell them it's a gender neutral sport the girls take ownership and the boys say 'you can have it'.
"These girls are going on to start their own rugby clubs. They go from being second-class citizens to being leaders in their community."
Since flying from Dili to Darwin, the journey has taken them down the Stuart Highway, across to Mt Isa and ultimately to Bulahdelah where they stayed Wednesday night before riding to Newcastle.
On Friday, they will ride to Gosford before making their way to Sydney for the Springbok vs Wallabies game on Saturday night. From there, they will spend a month cycling from the bottom of New Zealand to Auckland.
This isn't Mr Rutland's first time riding between world cup sites. In 2019, he and then riding partner James Owens, cycled from from London to Tokyo for the tournament in Japan. In the process they raised $150,000 for ChildFund Pass It Back, the tournament's official charity.
Originally he had asked to carry a replica of the world cup trophy but then Wrold Rugby COO, Alan Gilpin, told him it would be too bulky and suggested carrying the commemorative whistle.
When Mr Rutland was told there was no commemorative whistle to carry to the women's world cup, he asked "why not?".
"They said 'good point' and introduced a whistle."
His cycling journey kicked of a decade ago in a two-and-a-half year solo ride across Africa to England for the start of the 2015 world cup.
Having come from what he called a "relatively unadventurous" family, and always reading National Geographic about people doing wild adventures, Mr Rutland said he wanted to "do something wild".
"I started meeting some of these people and realised the only difference between me and them was that they had a big dream and acted on it when I was just finding excuses," he said.
"A mid-life confidence boost. I dreamt up the hardest thing I could do on a bicycle and I pulled it off.
"I had probably spent four nights of my life in a tent and had very little cycling experience."
WHAT DO YOU THINK? We've made it a whole lot easier for you to have your say. Our new comment platform requires only one log-in to access articles and to join the discussion on the Newcastle Herald website. Find out how to register so you can enjoy civil, friendly and engaging discussions. Sign up for a subscription here.
