Staffordshire Student Succeeds In Channel Challenge

Staffordshire University Beaconside Sports Centre challenged its members to the ‘David Walliams’ Challenge'.  David Walliams completed the actual cross channel swim last year in aid of Comic Relief. Entrants to this challange have  to ‘swim’ across the channel, a distance of 22 miles, and not to be thwarted by the lack of a swimming pool, a stationary Arm Cycle machine was used instead!  The distance could be completed in one session or a number of sessions throughout the month of March.

The star of this event is 20 year old Kristina Boddy, a student at Staffordshire University. Kristina suffers from cerebral palsy which can often make physical exercise very difficult. Kristina approached the sports centre in October 2006 expressing an interest in fitness. Since then she trains twice a week alongside Steve Bateman, Assistant Manager, pictured with Kristina, and has achieved goals that could have only dreamt of back in October. Back in Oct she could manage only 3 mins on the arm bike, only 5 months later, she  ‘crossed the channel’ in 2 hours, 20 minutes!

During the event, Kristina raised over £200 for SCOPE, with money still coming in.  Kristina has received endless help and support from the charity and took this opportunity to give something back to SCOPE by helping to raise funds and awareness.