For Bedford’s Gary Cox, the wheelchair tennis competitions keep coming after an impressive run to the semi-finals in the ITF3S event in Houston, Texas at the beginning of April and his coach, Neil Frankel is donning his running shoes in support.
Frankel, a stalwart at Riverside Tennis Club who now runs the ‘No Barriers’ disability programme, is preparing to run 110km in a single week to aid fundraising for Cox, who has jetted off to Turkey to compete for Team GB at the World Team Cup.
You can donate to Neil’s fundraising efforts here.
The World Team Cup is the biggest team competition in wheelchair tennis and is the ITF’s equivalent of the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup.
The event begins today (6 May) at the Club Ali Bey Manavgat resort in Antalya, Turkey.
Cox’s Team GB is one of eight nations taking part in the Quad tournament and has been drawn in Group B alongside USA, Australia and Colombia, but with funding for Quad and wheelchair tennis not a given, participation comes at a price.
Two ultra marathons in one week
Last year, Neil completed the 55km Ultra Trail Snowdonia charity challenge, raising over £2,300 for chosen charity CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) and in aid of Gary’s continuing target of reaching the Top 20 quad tennis players in the world.
Read: Riverside’s Neil Frankel completes Ultra Trail Snowdonia charity challenge
His target last year was £2,000 for the 55km run, so with the distance to be ran doubling to 110km, so does the fundraising target with £4,000 the magic number on this occasion.
The distance will be covered across the course of a week, beginning with 55km in the mountains of North Wales at the Ultra Trail Snowdonia on 17 May, and ending with the 35km run at the South Downs Way UK Ultra on 24 May.
Bedfordians can join Neil on the other two sections of the challenge on Tuesday 20 May with a 5km ‘shakedown run’ from the suspension bridge on the River Great Ouse from 7:30am, followed by the ‘El Classico Clapham’ 15km route the following day.
“Last year, the 55K in Snowdonia was pretty brutal, although on the plus side, I ate so many pain au chocolates the following week to build the reserves back it felt almost worth it!” said Neil ahead of his latest challenge.
“I’m looking forward to see what’s possible the week following the same event this time around.
“Supporting CALM and helping to fulfil the aspirations of an elite wheelchair athlete is an absolute privilege and will hopefully spur me on to dig deep when it gets tough,” he added.
You can check out Gary’s progress at the Team World Cup, which begins today as the GB Quad team face Colombia, at the LTA website here.
The donation page for Neil’s epic fundraiser can be found here, along with all of the details of the group events on 20 & 21 May.
