Around the World in 80 Lanes — My Final Stretch in South America
RUN FOR FUN: From Midnight Sun to Most South on Earth!
It all took off under a sun that refused to set. In Hammerfest, the world’s northernmost city, perched defiantly above the Arctic Circle, I laced up my spikes and launched into the first of eighty sprints that would eventually carry me to the opposite end of the planet. Athletes, veterans, and curious onlookers gathered for that opening run, and in that moment, the improbable project called “Around the World in 80 Lanes” became real.
Since that kick-off, the project has curled through the track ovals of Europe, down the sun-scorched coast of Spain, across to the electric energy of Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, where Masters veterans sprint with the same fire and laughter whether they are 40 or 75. Every stadium has been a chapter; every lane a sentence in a story written at full speed.
The Final in Sight. The closing chapters of this odyssey are now taking shape. Through the latter half of 2026, I will be threading together stadiums across Europe, North Africa, the Caribbean, and Florida. Then, as 2027 opens, the route curves south through South America – city by city, track by track – until the continent itself narrows to a point and there is nowhere left to run but one final straight.
“Sprinting is like fine wine. The older you get, the smoother your stride – and the more you appreciate the finish line.”
— A fellow veteran, World Masters Championships, Sweden
80 Stadiums, One Relay. This project has never been purely about speed. Yes, every stadium demands a 100m and a 200m sprint, timed and real. But what fills the space between the starting gun and the finish tape is something harder to measure: the handshakes with veteran sprinters who have kept running long past the age when the world told them to stop, the impromptu conversations in broken English and fluent laughter, the discovery that sport builds the same kind of human connection whether you are on a cinder track in a small Norwegian town or a state-of-the-art Olympic facility in Tokyo.
That final straight is waiting for me at the Hugo Lumbreras Stadium in Ushuaia, Argentina – the southernmost city in the world, gateway to Antarctica, a place where the wind comes off the Beagle Channel cold enough to make your eyes water mid-race.
After Ushuaia, the grand finale: Buenos Aires, where eighty stadiums and eighty stories will find their full stop, somewhere in the heart of Argentina, planned to happen in the February 2027.
Some of the most storied venues on earth appeared in the original dream — the Colosseum in Rome, where the echoes of gladiators still seem to circle the arena; Maracanã in Rio, the cathedral of football. Neither could accommodate a running track. That is the nature of dreams versus logistics. But the stadiums that did open their lanes have more than compensated: unexpected, unhyped, and unforgettable.
Altogether, I feel I have set up a kind of global relay – eighty batons passed between eighty cities, the same runner carrying each one, connected by nothing more technological than a pair of running spikes and a passport full of stamps.
Next on the menue: North Africa, Caribbean and Miami, Florida. Then South America; The highest level in La Paz, Bolivia, Lima, before Mendoza, Ushuaia and the finale in Buenos Aires.
Opposite of the Advice. A sharp and speedy Masters athlete once told wisdom with a grin: “The secret to a successful career is to sprint when you’re young and jog when you’re old.”
He was probably right. I arrived at that advice a few decades too late — which is precisely why I am doing the opposite. The sprinting comes now, in the years when most people are quietly slowing down, and every race is a small rebellion against the idea that the best is already behind you.
There is something clarifying about a sprint. You cannot think about yesterday or tomorrow in the 15-16 seconds it takes to run one hundred metres. There is only the lane ahead, the lungs burning, the arms driving, and the line rushing up to meet you. Multiplied by eighty stadiums across six continents, that clarity has become a kind of philosophy.
Con un Poco de Suerte. Far South the finish line is waiting, where the wind carries a faint chill of Antarctica and the city lights in Ushuaia reflect off the Beagle Channel. Getting there requires a few more months, a few more flights, a few more strangers who will become, somewhere between the warm-up and the cool-down, people worth remembering.
The running odyssey continues. Con un poco de suerte. Hoffentlich. Fiduciosamente. Avec un peu de chance.
With a little luck — in every language — the world will be crossed, eighty lanes at a time.
