Luke Birch and Jamie Sparks, childhood friends and endurance sport fanatics, have become the youngest pair ever to row the Atlantic, raising over £300,000 for Breast Cancer Care.
The Atlantic challenge, perhaps the toughest endurance challenge in the world, takes between 50-100 days as the contestants row over 3000 nautical miles through life-threatening waves, 35 mile per hour winds and with no more than 80 minutes sleep at a stretch.
The young pair have both previously undertaken 1500 mile cycling races, and Luke spent 15 hours swimming the English Channel when he was 18, but the Atlantic Challenge represented a new feat of endurance for the boys. They finished overall fifth in the challenge, but second in the pairs, and each lost over 12kg in weight despite eating 6000 calories a day.
The boys, dubbed 2 Boys in a Boat and fittingly sponsored by Duracell, became Breast Cancer Care’s biggest ever individual fundraisers and raised over 200% of their goal.
Source: DSG
