Kilworth Challenge teams raise £85,000
Working together...teams tackle the assault course at Stanford Hall during the Kilworth challenge. (Picture: Andrew Carpenter/001378-7)
THE DETERMINED efforts of competitors over the weekend and the months of fundraising beforehand netted more than £85,000 at this year’s Kilworth Challenge – one of the highest totals ever raised in the history of the event.
The 21st annual charity event, which took place on Saturday and Sunday in the fields in and around North Kilworth, saw 180 people from a record-setting 45 teams navigate 34 challenges over both days.
For more photos follow the link, top right.
Participants walked or ran about 25 miles and the challenges covered physical ones, puzzles and those that were fun but all with a serious competitive edge.
They included a Tarzan-esque task of swinging through trees, raft building, canoeing, word and number puzzles, building a da Vinci bridge, egg throwing, using a ducking stool to collect water and sprinting over a cross-country course.
Nick Otter, one of the organisers, said: “It was yet another splendid event, one that was highly appropriate for the 21st year of the challenge. It raised one of the highest amounts of sponsorship ever at £85,019.24 and took the running total to nearly £950,000 over the life of the challenge.”
This year’s overall winners were the sixth incarnation of The Horny Bar Studs, led by three ex-Lutterworth Grammar School students John Fish, Matt Soulsby and James York with friend Will Swaithest. It was the fifth time in six years that the Studs have won the top shield.
Runners-up were North Kilworth team Eager Belvoirs II - Aiden Ellis, Norman Byrd, Tim Grossey and Phil Cooper - who went one better than their finish from last year.
Third-place went to The Go Go Squad, comprised of Nick Coles, Tom Gregson, Ed Chilton and Andy Kellet.
The winning female foursome kept it in the family - the Four Non-Blondes team includes three sisters, Lorna, Caroline and Jennifer Paris, with friend Charlotte Armstrong.
Mixed team champions were Three Locals and a Foreigner, made up of Laura and Mike Bent and Polly and Huw Ross. Polly was also the fastest female yomper.
Tim Cullinan, of Far and Beyond, won the fastest male yomper title while the over-40s shield was won by a long-standing team in the competition The Kilworth Lions with Neil Foster, John Linnell, Adam Herring and Stefan Green.
The hard-working team which raised the highest amount of sponsorship were Kilworth-based Running on Carling - Simon Jones, Stuart Conopo, Ben Hurst and Jason Wright. Their efforts spread almost over the whole year raised a fantastic £6,282.24.
Six-time Kilworth Challenge veteran Cameron Downey, of 12th-placed P-Mech and the Borg, said afterwards: “It was the muddiest challenge I have seen - I have had five showers and a bath and am still finding dirt in places you don’t want to know about. We finished a respectable 12th and managed to wade in with £2,860 sponsorship which we were well-pleased with.”
This bulk of this year’s sponsorship will go to Dukes Barn in Derbyshire, an outwood-bound organisation specialising in supporting and helping disabled children and to the Leicestershire Clubs for Young People as well as many other Harborough district charities and good causes.
The organising committee of Colin Clark, Paul Whitehead, Mike Lawrence, Bruce Phillips, Nick Otter, Duncan Moss, Mick Faulkner, Chris Mitchell and Manfred Morris thanked everyone who helped especially the marshals and landowners who contributed to making it such a success. We are looking forward hopefully to hitting the million-pound mark in 2012,” Mr Otter added.
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Weather for Market Harborough
Tuesday 21 May 2013
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