William Sichel, Scotland’s leading ultra distance internationalist, will this weekend travel to Hamm, Germany to make an attempt on a 126 year old record, the oldest in Scottish athletic history. 

The record, 546 miles – that’s almost 21 marathons - in six days, was set by George Cameron in New York in 1882.

Running under his professional name George ‘Noremac’, the Edinburgh born Scot was a professional athlete living in America and competing on the professional circuit. 

The record was set on a purpose-built indoor track, but William will have to make do with an outdoor, red cinders track at the Adolf Bruhl Stadium in Hamm near Dortmund.  The race runs from 1pm UK time on Sunday June 29th to 1pm on Saturday July 5th.

This will be William’s third Six Day race and his first on a track.  William remains unbeaten in this gruelling event having twice won the Monaco Six Day road race with an improved distance each year.  Formerly World No1 and ranked World No3 last year, William has a current best of 502.8 miles (just over 19 marathons) and lies 3rd on the Scottish All-Time list of best performances since records began in the 1800’s.

“When I won the Monaco race last year I improved my best by almost a marathon and that was despite very poor weather conditions for the last 3 days.  I’m hopeful that if the weather is reasonable I’ve got a fighting chance of challenging the old record,” said Sichel.

William will have a single crewman for the first three days and a full crew of three people for the last three days when the pressure is really on.

Not content with going for such a long standing record William will also put his unbeaten six day record under severe threat as also running in Hamm will be Germany’s Wolfgang Schwerk, who has opened 2008 with victories in the Athens 7 day race and the New York 10 day event as well as being one of the very few humans to have a personal best of over 600 miles in six days.