Words by Bailey Alexander
The 2024 Montane Dragon’s Back, as you can tell by the name, is a bit of a beast. Here’s a bit of a rundown on the challenge.
Simon Dent is running the 2024 Dragon’s Back in Wales, a race he says is “billed as the toughest mountain ultra in the world”. A bit of a big deal then? He jokes, “This could be my last year on the planet”. From one extreme to another, he reveals his main obstacle, “I’ve got a little bit of a history with vertigo but a challenge isn’t a challenge unless it’s challenging, right?”
If ever there was a definitive challenge, this race is it. 380 kilometres over 6 days, it’s not for the faint-hearted, and it’s made only more impressive by the cause Simon is running on behalf of, “It’s a big old campaign for Greenhouse Sports and Dallaglio Rugby Works. We’re starting fundraising quite early, but I have high aspirations of raising £50,000”.
Greenhouse Sports and Dallaglio Rugby Works have quite similar causes. Dallaglio, who have coined the hashtag #IncludetheExcluded, focus on helping young people who “have been excluded from mainstream education and schooling, and then offers them a gateway into education through the schools of sport and primarily rugby”. Meanwhile Greenhouse, who have been running for over 20 years now, “provide after school coaching and mentoring for around 7,000 children” and a reflection of just how many school children don’t have access to sports and PE. Both are great charities with a real emphasis on sport and what it can do to help out kids who need it.
When I ask him why he’s chosen these two charities, Simon gives a really poignant yet sadly quite socially disturbing explanation: “I think there’s an alarming statistic that 65 percent of children who are expelled from school end up in the prison system, and to think that at that age you could be pigeonholed as ‘a problem’ that then puts you on that path really worries me. These two charities are doing a lot of hard work to fix this problem, but they’re so underfunded”.
The race is going to take place next September and be run by around 300 participants, all hoping to conquer what, at times, may feel like the unconquerable. Simon is going to give it his all though, for two charities that have come to mean a lot to him over the years.
In the meantime, Simon has to get started on training, although he says he’s going to take it slow, “One of the key things will be actually getting time out in the mountains because trying in a town, city, or even the hills of East Sussex where I live is just a very different ball game to up in the mountains”.
Donate to Simon’s cause here!