Jumber Lezhava

Jumber Lezhava was born in Tbilisi on July 23, 1939 , but lived a significant part of his life in the city of Rustavi . In 1966 he graduated from the Tbilisi Polytechnic Institute (qualification - electrical engineer). In 1987, after undergoing a major operation, he developed his own system of exercises with which he was able to fully recover. In 1990-1992, he set several world records for push-ups from the floor and got into the Guinness Book of Records. Later, the records were improved several times by him (the last time in 2001).

In the period from August 13, 1993 to November 3, 2003, he made a round-the-world trip on a bicycle. Within 3333 days, Jumber Lezhava visited 234 states and dependent territories located in Asia, Australia, Oceania, North and South America, Europe and Africa, visited Antarctica twice, covered 264 thousand km. having changed nine bicycles over the years. During the trip, Jumber Lezhava took more than 50,000 photographs, about 200 hours of video material, wrote a 7,000-page diary about his adventures.

He is a holder of a number of state awards (including the Order of Vakhtang Gorgasali I degree and the State Prize of Georgia). He has the status of "Traveler-diplomat" - assigned to him by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia (1993) and was also awarded a UNESCO diploma - "Athlete of the World" (1999). In 2002, he was named "Person of the Year" in Georgia and was awarded state awards. In recent years, Jumber has also been actively involved in pedagogical and social activities.

He died on July 25 , 2014 from a stroke .