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Sportshour: Meet the "Extreme Environmental Athlete"

Discussion & Talk

Rugby Star Hits New Hights

12/03/2016 GMT

Meet the "Extreme Environmental Athlete"

BBC World Service - Sportshour, Meet the "Extreme Environmental Athlete"

Richard Parks international rugby player turned self-styled Extreme Environmental Athlete

Richard Parks is set to take on his toughest challenge. He's used to rough sporting battles, having played rugby union for Wales, but it's his career as a self-styled "Extreme Environmental Athlete" that has really pushed him to the limits. His next goal is to climb Everest without the aid of oxygen, taking blood samples for medical research into Alzheimers along the way. In doing so he hopes to become the first man to do so. 

Bonkers Bucket List Bet!
Ever thought about all the sporting events you'd most like to go to? A kind of sporting bucket list. Well that's exactly what Welshman Kieren "Beefy" Blake and New Zealander Rob Bryers did... And then some!They are taking in 365 different sports in 365  days all over the globe. We catch up with them a third of the way through their sporting odyssey in Greenland at the Eskimo Games

From Raqqa to Rucks
Mohed Altrad was born and abandoned in a Bedouin tent in the Syrian desert near Raqqa. Through sheer grit he got himself an education and a stroke of luck gave him a chance to study in the French coastal city of Montpellier. Several decades later, and now a billionaire he owns Montpellier rugby club. He tells Sportshour about the tough message he gave French President Francois Hollande on how to deal with French born Islamic extremists.

Football against ISIS
Can football play a part in the fight against terrorism? The organisers of a recent charity tournament in Sweden believe so. The Mesopotamia Cup, is organised by a group of Swedes of Kurdish origin that last weekend brought together 26 five-aside teams and hundreds of spectators to raise money to help fight ISIS. 

Arctic Sport
In the furthest reaches of Europe, the sun is now slowly returning over the horizon, following a midwinter of unrelenting darkness and sub-zero temperatures.  You'd think that life at such extremes would mean a time for hibernation and inactivity - but in Finnish Lapland, above the Arctic Circle, there's no such sign.  So how does cold weather affect not only sport, but the unique culture of this polar region? 

Sporting Witness… Goes back to 1969 when an ice hockey match between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union led to major unrest in Prague, which became known as the Czech hockey riots.

Photo: Richard Parks in action for the Welsh national rugby union team(L) and ready for his next extreme environmental sporting challange

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