Vätternrundan: 300 km Around a Swedish Lake, Starting at Night

01A doctor walks into a bike shop

In August 1964, in Motala, Professor Sten-Otto Liljedahl, a sports physician, pushes open the door of the Rydell brothers' bike shop. He suggests to Ewert Rydell that they ride around Lake Vättern. They set off two days later, in bad weather. They are back in Motala after 22 hr 30 min in the saddle. Almost a full turn of the clock.

02A Christmas card

The organizers tell the rest. On June 23, 1965, a second attempt, with four more cyclists. At Christmas, Liljedahl sends Rydell a card asking him to turn the idea into a real event. The first Vätternrundan starts on June 17, 1966. The official timeline counts 344 starters, six of them women, and 334 finishers. The En Svensk Klassiker site sums it up as a little over 300 riders. A pretty good greeting card.

03Vätternrundan starts at night, wave after wave

This is not a single-peloton event. Cyclists leave in groups, one every 2 minutes, from Friday evening into Saturday morning. In 2008, according to BikeRadar, the first riders set off at 8 p.m., in groups of 50, and the last at 5 a.m. The elite riders start at 4:30 a.m. and finish the lap in about 7 hr 30 min. In 2017, regional broadcaster SVT notes a first start at 7:30 p.m.

The earliest starters watch the sun set and rise over the lake, notes En Svensk Klassiker. “What I love most with Vätternrundan is to bike in middle of the summer night. It is quiet and dark, but still warm,” Gudrun Johansson, a nurse from Gothenburg, told BikeRadar in 2008.

04The world's largest?

That is the organizer talking: the Vätternrundan is the “world's largest recreational cycling event.” The numbers are dizzying, but they shift from year to year. In 2008, 15,205 cyclists complete the lap, a record at the time (15,945 starters, according to BikeRadar). In 2017, SVT counts about 23,000 entrants from more than 60 countries, about 20,000 of them on the 300 km.

With the week's other events, the organizers announce around 30,000 participants a year and 4,000 volunteers. The lap is no longer quite 300 km, by the way: the organizers' site now says 315 km.

05The 1966 regular

Who has done every edition since the start? In 2016, the organizers count two, Stig Johansson and Lars-Åke Åkerman; SVT still names both in 2017. Today the organizers name just one: Stig Johansson, from Fagersanna, who completes his 60th lap in 2025, according to them. He knows that finish line by heart.