In case you haven’t noticed, Dan Bilzerian’s Instagram feed has changed a lot lately. It’s not just pics of him in bed with random topless chicks. He’s on a bike, training for “the bet of a lifetime” that he made with hedge fund manager/high stakes poker player Bill Perkins. The terms are insane, if not suicidal: Ride a bicycle 293 miles from Los Angeles to the Las Vegas sign in 48 hours. The stakes? $600,000.
Before he started training, Bilzerian had only spent under 20 hours on a bike. Now he has to ride a longer distance in two days than the first two days of the Tour de France.
Bilzerian’s bet and training regimen is currently a huge NY Post story. Here’s the backstory about how the whole thing transpired between he and Perkins:
“This is no joke,” Bilzerian tells The Post. The 35-year-old needs to cover 293 miles if he wants to win. “Nobody does this. From LA to Vegas I have a 13,000-foot climb — which is [almost] half of Mount Everest — but I wanted a challenge.”
…
“Over the course of training, the most I’ve ridden [at one time] is 54 miles in 4½ hours,” says Bilzerian, who is no stranger to wacky wagers: He once bet $3,000 that he could win a round of tennis playing without a racquet, and raced his Shelby Cobra (pictured above) against a Ferrari for $385,000 (Bilzerian triumphed at both).
On the other side of the current dare is gas trader Bill Perkins, who initiated the bet at a high-stakes poker game. Perkins has a penchant for kicking out strange propositions: He once offered Bilzerian $500,000 if he would work as a valet at a casino for a month (Bilzerian turned him down).
The tycoon originally offered his bet to another player at the table, Rick Salomon (famous for co-starring in Paris Hilton’s notorious 2001 sex video). Salomon turned it down, and a couple days later, Bilzerian bit. Perkins couldn’t be happier. “I may follow him in an RV, and that will be psychological torture for Dan,” says the 47-year-old.
Since the story was published yesterday, Bilzerian upped the ante on the $600,000 bet by making a side bet with Rick Salomon. He’s offering him his G4 Gulfstream jet for $250,000 from Paris Hilton’s ex-fuckbuddy. That’s a grand total of $850,000 if he completes the ride.
He announced it with the usual fanfare; On Instagram surrounded by topless chicks:
That’s probably a hard toy for the Instagram playboy to part with. I can’t imagine him having to go back to commercial air travel. Hell, even NetJets seems like a compromise.
Meanwhile, Bilzerian is planning on spending money to make money. Lance Armstrong is helping him out with training, plus he’s going to dive deep into his wallet for the ride itself:
Bilzerian says he plans to spend around $125,000 on equipment, chase vans and support staff including bike techs, a doctor, two chefs, trainer, masseuse and an assistant. Win or lose, he’ll give $25,000 to Armstrong’s child-cancer charity, and if he’s victorious, he’ll use $350,000 to cover a recent poker loss.
The ride goes down later this month. Stay tuned.