Heinz Stücke

Heinz Stücke (11 January 1940 – 22 July 2026) was a German long-distance itinerant cyclist from Hövelhof, North Rhine-Westphalia – noted for setting the world record for bicycle touring in 1995.

In a global journey spanning more than 50 years, Stücke travelled over 600,000 kilometres by bicycle.

Global bicycle tour In November 1962, the 22-year-old Stücke quit his job as a tool and die maker, and rode out of his hometown on a three-speed bicycle, with a plan to see the world. He said that his extraordinary desire to travel was partly motivated by his aversion to returning to factory work. Between 1962 and 2010, he cycled more than , and visited 195 countries and 78 territories. From 1995 through 1999, the Guinness Book of Records described him as having travelled more widely by bicycle than anyone in history.

During his travels, Stücke encountered many hazards and suffered numerous injuries:

In the Chilean Atacama Desert, he was hit by a truck. In the United States he was abandoned by an automobile driver who stole all of his supplies after offering him a ride. In England, 2006, his bicycle—the same machine he rode from Hövelhof in 1962—was stolen again, this time from his campsite in Portsmouth. (The bicycle was recovered the following day in a local park.)

Recording the journey alt=Heinz Stücke stands in front of an array of photos pinned to corkboard. He smiles slightly and leans against one of several glass-covered trays of trinkets on a table before him. Stücke poses with some of his photographs and other memorabilia. During his decades of travel, Stücke took more than 100,000 photographs. He funded his expeditions with licensing revenue from his photo catalogue; donations; and sales of his travel writing, postcards, and booklets that featured his photographs, writing, and illustrations. In 2015, Dutch travel writer Eric van den Berg published a biography commemorating Stücke's career of global bicycle touring—a career that by then had continued for more than 50 years.

In the 2010s, Spanish filmmaker Albert Albacete began making a documentary film about Stücke and his legacy. The film, The Man Who Wanted to See It All (2021), inquires into Stücke's motivations and philosophy. While Albacete was making the film, he learned that some villagers in Stücke's hometown of Hövelhof were building a museum to document and celebrate Stücke's travels and achievements.

Death Stücke died on 22 July 2026, at the age of 86.