Brave Brit to travel to Tasmania to take on top athletes in gruelling six-day Charity Adventure Race
| Published: 30th October 2007 21:26 |
Justine Goulding at recent cricket ball event
A 28-year-old sports enthusiast from Manchester is to travel 11,000 miles to an island on the other side of the world next month to take part in one of the world's greatest adventure races, competing alongside some of the world's top athletes (17-24 November).
Justin Goulding, from Cheadle Hulme in Stockport, whose day job is working for the Press Association as a sports reporter, has signed up to participate in the Mark Webber Pure Tasmania Challenge, a six-day race on foot, bike and by kayak covering some 300 miles through Tasmania's most challenging wilderness*. He follows in the footsteps of Olympic rower James Cracknell, who competed in 2006, but this is the first time that the Challenge has welcomed a non-professional competitor from the UK.
The 2theXtreme Cup, which is the professional athletes' category, promises to be a hard fought race between F1 racing driver Mark Webber himself, who will have recently completed the 2007 Grand Prix season, and Olympians Tatiana Grigorieva (pole vaulter), Michael Klim (swimmer), and James Tomkins (rower). Other athletes include two of the world's biggest adventure racers, Kiwi Richard Ussher and Guy Andrews - arguably the two fittest men on the planet.
Goulding is hoping that his ability will be more evenly matched by his amateur sporting counterparts from Australia, who are competing in teams entered by Cadbury Schweppes, Lonely Planet, Royal Bank of Scotland and Telstra, all of whom will be chasing the prized non-elite category of the challenge, the Van Diemen's Cup.
Commenting on his decision, Goulding says: "It may sound like a strange idea for a holiday, but The Mark Webber Pure Tasmania Challenge appealed to me immediately. I don't think you can beat working up a sweat while you're surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery on the planet. I did a triathlon this year for the first time and I want to test myself even further now - it's pretty safe to say that the Challenge will do that. I also like the idea of doing a race in the great outdoors, rather than a man-made course where they might see a car overtaking you."
As well as achieving a personal ambition, Goulding will also be helping to raise money for two charities close to Mark Webber's heart - The Leukaemia Foundation and the Save the Tassie Devil Appeal**.
Goulding sees it as a great opportunity to stretch himself to the limits: "My main objective is to finish the race, but as a naturally competitive person, I don't just want to get through it. I don't necessary want to beat people (I've got a feeling I'll be near the back somewhere) but I do want to push myself and do the best I can. The chance to compete alongside professional athletes is once-in-a-lifetime stuff - I can't wait to talk to them and find out what makes them tick."
For more information on the Mark Webber Pure Tasmania Challenge, visit www.markwebberchallenge.
*Tasmania lies off the south coast of mainland Australia and is regarded as the most mountainous island in the world. It has some of the last temperate rainforest left on earth and in December environmentalists are celebrating the 25th anniversary of its World Heritage Inscription, following the bitterly fought struggle to prevent the Franklin River from being dammed for the hydro-electric project.
**The Tasmanian Devil, the world's largest surviving carnivorous marsupial, unique to Tasmania, is under threat of extinction from a mysterious facial tumour disease. Its demise threatens the delicate ecology of the last temperate rainforest island on earth.
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