Biking Through the Pain of War

In 2015, Rebecca Rusch and Huyen Nguyen set out to bike 1,200 miles of the Ho Chi Minh Trail as strangers from once-opposing countries. They two cyclists navigated the infamous trail through Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, carrying the weight of their personal connections to the land. The journey challenged not only their physical capabilities, but their notions of war, pride, sorrow, and loss. Rusch planned the ride in honor of her father who died in 1972 while flying a fighter jet over Laos. Rusch was three years old when her father died. Nguyen helped Rusch through the sometimes dangerous terrain, carrying her own personal stories of the war. What did they face, head on, as they rode together?

You can listen to Biking Through the Pain of War online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Biking Through the Pain of War is an episode from The Long Game: Sports Stories of Courage and Conviction by Foreign Policy and Doha Debates.

This episode is 29:38 long.

This episode was published on Nov 17, 2022.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from The Long Game: Sports Stories of Courage and Conviction when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.