A few weeks ago we wrote about race car driver Billy Monger, who planned on racing a 140-mile “triathlon” towards the end of February. The British athlete, who lost both his legs in a tragic crash during a British F4 race in 2017, aimed to raise funds for Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day. After five hard days of walking, kayaking and cycling, Monger just completed the challenge.
Monger had initially planned to race for four days, but stormy weather made it impossible to go out to kayak on the second day of his adventure. “Obviously I was gutted not to get out there because after day one and how tough that was and the fact we managed to overcome it,” he told the Belfast Telegraph. “I wanted to use that momentum to push me on into yesterday and the rest of the challenge,” he continues. “The fact we then had to have a day off yesterday, you are sitting back around the hotel again.”
On the first day Monger, who uses protheses, walked nearly 30 km. A famous British comedian, Chris Ramsey, joined him on the walk that started in Newcastle and lead to Durham. Before Monger had started training for this challenge, he had never walked more than eight kilometers with his protheses on, so this was an incredible achievement for the 21-year-old athlete.
Cycling was completely new to him, too. In the four years after Monger’s crash he had not been on a bike until he started his preparation a few weeks ago. Despite the lack of experience he had to cover a distance of over 100 miles in the saddle.
