An Australian newspaper columnist is eating crow after accepting a challenge from Russell Crowe to a 20-kilometre bike ride.
The Gladiatorstar wanted a race after a story in Sydney's Daily Telegraph mocked him for eating and smoking on a bike ride with his personal trainer.
The piece, by gossip columnist Annette Sharp, was headlined "smokes and fatty foods the fitness regime for Rusty" and showed a picture of Crowe pausing for tacos and a smoke on a Sydney street.
Crowe's representative called Sharp the following day and said: "Get on your bike. Russell wants you to go riding with him. Are you ready to die?"
Sharp agreed to meet Crowe at dawn for the race, but was soon struggling to keep up with the actor.
At one point during the trip, she fell off the bike.
"I was sliding exuberantly down the track when, with a thump, I came off the seat and landed painfully on the crossbar," Sharp wrote in her column. "This was surely it — his victory moment, with me sprawled in the dirt."
However, Crowe was a gentleman about the incident, turning back to help her up and check her knees for injury.
He even told her she was a better biker than Australian director Baz Luhrmann. "You're twice the man Baz is," he said.
Crowe is a well-known figure around Sydney, where he lives and co-owns a rugby league team called the South Sydney Rabbitohs.
He is also known for his fiery temper although he has a usually cordial relationship with Sydney's journalists.
Sharp said she accepted the challenge as part of the price of being a gossip columnist.
"When you make a living throwing stones you expect that one day someone is going to lob one back," she wrote.
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