Tonight, Gareth ‘Alfie’ Thomas will face his latest and toughest challenge yet when he will attempt to climb up the ladder of a fire engine to reach an aerial platform 100ft up in the air. The challenge will happen between 6.30pm and 7.30pm at the Oval Basin/Roald Dahl Plass, opposite the Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay. The public are welcome to come along and support Gareth and the team.
This is just one of the challenges that former Wales Rugby Captain Gareth ‘Alfie’ Thomas is doing to gear up for the biggest challenge of his life – a skydive from 12,000ft alongside a troop of 17 pensioners for Sport Relief. The problem for Alfie is that he has an extreme phobia of heights, making the challenge a petrifying prospect, even for a man who has captained the Lions. To try to overcome his fear, he has been undertaking a series of escalating trials as he gets ever closer to jump day. They’ve ranged from climbing a household ladder to clean a friend’s guttering to abseiling down a quarry. With the skydive itself just days away, Gareth’s nerves are building making success at tonight’s ladder climb all the more vital to ensuring his confidence that he will be able to make the jump on the big day.
Several of Gareth’s parachutist pensioners will also be joining him in Cardiff Bay to collect Sport Relief donations. Among them will be Dilys Price, 85, from Cardiff, the World’s Oldest Female Skydiver who has quickly become Gareth’s wing-woman in his Sport Relief challenge.
Gareth’s challenge is being followed for a BBC Wales documentary Gareth Thomas’ Silver Skydivers for Sport Relief to be broadcast later this month on BBC One Wales.
