Cross-country road trip to Beijing

As early as two months ago, an American, a Chinese and a Ukrainian hatched a plan of a "Eurasia Olympic" drive. Eight days before the Opening Ceremony, Joseph Lemire, Wang Yunpeng and Sergey Sukhovskyy started their elaborately decorated four-wheel drive car and set off for Beijing from the Ukrainian capital Kiev.

They drove through Russia, passed the border into China and down to Beijing. The whole distance was much longer than they had expected. "We calculated it to be around 9,000 km before we set off but it turned out to be nearly 10,000 kms, about 40 percent around the world!" says 52-year-old Lemire. Some of the roads were much longer and rougher than they had expected but they were lucky to have the experienced Sukhovskyy, an auto magazine editor, as their driver.

The adventure could easily have been over after just three days. They were driving through the night for the Russian city of Samara when the car hit an object on the road, spun around and flipped over. The car ended up in a roadside ditch but the dazed trio escaped serious injury.