A British man who has taken on the ultimate sporting challenge by tackling every Olympic and Paralympic event to raise awareness and funds for five UK charities; Cancer Research UK, Oxfam, Right To Play Scope and NSPCC, will attempt all pool swimming events in one go (182 lengths, including 18 butterfly) on Friday 8th June at Swiss Cottage, London.
Dan Thompson, Founder of Gold Challenge, the UK’s largest charity challenge which has 95,000 taking on their own Olympic themed challenges, choose to combine the challenges his company offers and attempt to do all 114 Olympic & Paralympic events able to be completed by a single person at London 2012.
Starting his challenge in 2010 he has so far completed 84 events and aims to finish the remaining 30 before the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games. Dan has already competed in an overwhelming range of sports from synchronised swimming to pole vault, wheelchair rugby to high diving and boccia to rhythmic gymnastics.
A genuine fear of horses (equinophobia) meant that it took two sessions before he even got on a horse and a further six before be able to tackle a small jump and learning to high dive as a 6ft 4” 51 year old vertigo sufferer took a very patient coach, namely the former world diving champion Chris Snode.
He has spent well over 1,000 hours on his challenge in all weather conditions and ncluding training will travel over 1 million metres including having run 77,505 metres, cycled over 228,000 and walked over 70,000. He has put up with sudden excruciating headaches, injured wrists (sabre fencing), elbows (tennis & swimming), shoulders (rings), neck (wrestling), both hamstrings (athletics) and six lost toenails. Dan will be attempting all 13 pool swimming events in one go on Friday 8th June at Swiss Cottage, London.
This will equate to 182 lengths at once, including 18 lengths of butterfly, a stroke which he is yet to master. He will be available for interview in the lead up to his swimming challenge on 8th June and on the day pre and post swim at Swiss Cottage, London. For further details of all his challenge & the remaining sports, please contact sarahd@goldchallenge.org or 07811 265 034. As the challenge has progressed he has received help & coaching from Olympians and GB coaches as well as completed some sports at Olympic venues.
Dan’s Challenge began in 2010 while training for the London Marathon when he decided that he would try and attempt the ultimate challenge of taking part in all the events. Since then his challenge has grown to epic proportions as well as his business, which he set up to enable others to be able to take on similar sporting challenges.
There are now over 95,000 people across the UK taking part in one of his company’s challenges in order to raise money for one of 150 UK charities.