Original subtitles

[Title music]

This is the story of Ben Forsyth, a

talented young bike rider, British Youth

Champion and bright light

in the cycling firmament

with a huge potential,

who died before his time.

It's also about the people around him,

his family and friends, the people who

loved and supported him,

people who now dedicate their time to

spreading awareness,

fundraising and taking action

in the hope that it might prevent this

from happening to other young people.

[Music]

When he died, I just felt like part of my

heart had broken because

he was such a big part of,

he's like such a big reason of why I'm a

professional bike rider.

And like I can't share any of that with

him and that hurts a lot because he would

be super proud of me and my achievements.

You know, like being able to see me do

what he couldn't do as well, I think he

got a lot of joy from seeing me achieve

what we'd set out to do together.

So yeah, it was a

really, really difficult time.

Most proud of Ben winning the British

Champs, that stands out by a mile.

My races got put in the back burner

and I would support him because I

recognised that I'm an old guy who was

or never has been type

of thing and still tries.

And then as a young lad coming up he showed

so much potential. Whilst Ben was

starting to race at an

extremely high level nationally,

we were aware that there was other kids

in cycling and also in

other sports who were

having cardiac issues.

So my wife actually did a bit of

research, found a charity, Cardiac Risk

in the Young, found out that they do

cardiac screenings around the country.

So in 2013, we took Ben along to a

cardiac screening and at that point Ben

was picked up with an ectopic heartbeat.

Further investigations showed that there

was nothing wrong with his heart at that

time and that he was

able to continue racing.

And ironically, it was just a few months

after that when he

won the British Champs.

Ben at that age, he was

competitive at the British level.

He was good. He ended up winning British

Champs, which I think to be honest with

you, it was a shock for everyone.

I saw a picture online, it was of Ben

winning and Margaret jumping around in

the background and

that's when I first saw and I went

flipping heck because he was

kind of the first youth to win,

especially the road.

At that time the road was

such a big deal to all of us.

I remember a photo of him crossing the

line and he had the ERC kit and he always

had that horrible, horrible kind of red

cabbage-like helmet that he used to wear

with those silly Oakleys and his mum

jumping up and down.

2014, the boys that are at that age, you

know, at 16 years old are starting to get

bigger and stronger all the time.

He kind of plateaued a little bit in 2014

and all his peers were kind of moving

onwards and upwards and getting stronger.

I didn't know whether it was the same as

everyone. You kind of, at that age you start

discovering other things in life.

So there's other focuses that lie and I

don't know whether it was maybe a bit of

that because we're all young boys.

That was kind of where I started seeing

it a little bit more, he was struggling a

wee bit more with the racing and no

no-one kinda understood why.

And then in 2015 he really, really

started to suffer badly on the bike.

We couldn't really work out what was

going on. Back into the hospital further

MRI and was found to have Arithmogenic Right

Ventricular Cardiomyopathy at that time,

which meant that he had to instantly stop

training, stop racing.

Couldn't do anything at all that raised

his heart rate above

130 beats per minute.

It took a lot for him and

I know it hurt him a lot.

You know, to be told that to have your dream

shattered like that is so, so difficult

and I think Keith and Margaret should be

really proud of how he handled that.

After almost three years of living with

this heart disease that Ben had, in 2018

he had been off travelling with his

girlfriend around Thailand

for a month in the summer.

Came back from there and then decided to

go away with a few mates to Malta.

It was late at night when they arrived.

Dropped their bags straight out off into

a pub, club sort of place.

Ben started to feel unwell and quite quickly

deteriorated to a point where he got up

to go outside for breath of fresh air,

thinking that might help, and collapsed.

And suffered a sudden

cardiac death at that time.

My mum phoned me and I could hear her kinda

voice breaking and she was

like, "Ben's passed away."

I'm quite bad for it sometimes. I don't

really show my emotional side and that

sense and tears isn't

something I normally relate to.

I just remember crying my eyes out, but

not even just sobbing. It

was just a constant sob.

He'd been away for the summer and I think

he'd been a lot busier with uni stuff, so

we hadn't hung out quite as much, but yeah

I was around at the time he died and that was very...

it was a sad time, yeah, because obviously, like

I say, it's your full

life, such a happy guy.

Once we got Ben back into the country, we

were able to have the funeral.

There was a phenomenal turnout. We

couldn't get everybody into the

crematorium, which was a measure of

really how many people Ben

had touched in his short life.

So Ben was 20 years old at that point.

And so we had a collection for Cardiac

Risk in the Young, raised a phenomenal

amount of money on the day,

and it was that that led us into thinking

about setting up a

memorial fund in Ben's name.

The reason for doing that was so that we

could then raise further funds and then

host screening events with

Cardiac Risk in the Young

and host screening

events for other young people.

For every £5,000 that we raise through

Ben's memorial fund, then I can get the

CRY doctors to come along and organise a

screening day for young people.

And on that day, we can

screen up to 100 young people.

So going forward, we hope that we can

keep this on in Ben's legacy and

hopefully at least some good will come

out of this terrible situation.

[Music]

One of the many ways Keith, his family

and friends have raised money for

screenings is by doing

hard, challenging events.

The Chiller 24, organised by Cold Brew

Events, is a good example.

It's a 24-hour mountain bike race at

Kielder, Northumberland.

We heard about the Kielder Chiller here

when Barry first

started the ball rolling here.

We did a fundraiser for CRY because the

summer before we had lost Ben.

We were keen to support

the race right from the off.

24-hour mountain bike races are fantastic

and there's only a few

around in the country,

so always keen to keep them

going and support the events.

So we put in a shop team, a quad team, for

2017 and we won '17.

I think we won '17 and '18.

So the Chiller's a 24-hour mountain bike

race, starting at 11am Saturday

to 11am on Sunday morning and your last

lap has to finish

within the 24-hour period.

If you come in at a minute

past 11, that lap doesn't count.

We've got solos who just basically ride

the whole time on their own,

pairs who alternate between riders and

we're riding in a quad category,

so we're alternating doing a single

lap each, one lap on, three laps off.

Barry commissioned this fantastic big

trophy that's now

competed for in the quad category

the Ben Forsyth Trophy

which is a big wooden carved massive

piece of timber trophy in

the shape of Kielder Water.

I'm not sure if it's a pleasure, but I

had the honour of presenting that to the

Fish Face Cycles guys

who beat us in the quad category after we

previously won the first two

events the first two years.

So this year of course we're hoping to

try and get one over on the Fish Face

guys in a bit of revenge.

It's not going to be easy.

They've got a fantastic team.

It should be a good race hopefully

between the two teams.

There's a few other teams there of course

as well, but I think on

paper that we would say this,

us and them are the two strongest teams.

So we've got myself,

Steve Deas, the shop owner.

iCycles gives you wheels!

And then we've got the young hotshot, Lewis Cowe

He's a really good Enduro rider: one of the top

One of the top Scottish Enduro riders

but he's also really good for a

quick blast around the lap here as well.

Mark came into the team just at

short notice to help

us out. Very good rider, good

bike handler. Ben was Mark's best mate

and has done some

fundraising already for CRY.

An unbelievable kid and he shouldn't have

gone and he gave so

much to everyone in the

world and he motivated everyone and

inspired so many people from what he did.

Yeah it broke me down. After Ben died all

of us you know we were rushing to get our

hearts scanned but it shouldn't take

somebody's life for that to happen.

We just live up the road and we come

mountain biking here quite a

lot and James has really

grown up riding bikes and from a very

early age he's been

riding some quite technical

stuff. So we just made the decision to

have a go at this as a

pair which is a pretty massive

challenge for anybody let alone for a 10

year old, 'cause there's some

very technical sections

in it. We basically

wanted to raise some money for

Cardiac Risk in the Young. I've raised

money for them before.

I did the North Coast 500 in one go

a couple of years ago. I always felt

like you've got to do

something hard if you're

gonna ask people for money, and we decided

on this as a really

hard thing to do. When

I first got into endurance mountain

biking, Keith Forsyth

was one of the first people

I met and you know we've got a very very

good friendship. He's a

great guy and obviously

like with everybody what's happened with

his son when his son

died of a cardiac arrhythmia

was just devastating. I think everybody

is feeling it all the

time. It's always in

my mind. So for James... sorry.... we felt

very close to the story

and we wanted to raise

some money for it. [Good for you] So that's

what we've done. We

wanted to find a hard challenge

and we found it.

I got started about 20 years ago.

Completely out of the

blue, my wife came back from Toys

R Us one day with a couple of bikes and a

little kind of kiddy seat

on the back of my

bike so that Ben could jump on the back

and we just pottered

around at home riding quite

a lot together from a young age because I

got into the bikes and

then we ended up up and down

the length and breadth of the country

racing together or in

the pits for each other at

various different events. Keith was like

quite an interesting

role model I think for Ben

with racing because Ben obviously grew up

with such a like a

really high level parent

racing like, Keith is a physical machine

on the bike. Like he's

done some really impressive

things. I think Ben had some big shoes to fill there.

I won the Strathpuffer pairs with

my mate Mike but prior to that I'd won

the pairs a couple of

times with Steve and I've

won the solo four years in a row. Four

times British Champion,

24 hour British Champion,

world age category champion,

Ten Under the Ben, Tour de Ben.

My motivation at that time

apart from enjoyment for myself was also

to show my kids that

here's an old guy, look

what I'm doing, let's see what you guys

can do. And of course

Ben got that completely

but I'm not getting any younger!

So there's a lot of young

hot shots coming up now and

there's a lot of really good riders

around and a lot of the

younger guys are now getting

into the endurance stuff as well and

that's hard because I'm

giving away, I don't know,

25 nearly 30 years to some of them.

His dad was mad for it and still is.

You wouldn't see me dead doing a

Strathpuffer, I don't know

what possesses someone to do

something like that! I think there's a

difference between a parent

wanting their kid to do well

at what they do and a pushy parent and I

think Keith was

completely a pushy parent! I'm only joking!

No, Keith definitely just

wanted Ben to do what he

loved and it's not only

in cycling, it's in any sport is that how

much time parents give up for their kids.

Ben when he was 14 put together a team of

three of his 14 year old

mates who I think

happened to be the top four 14 year old boys

in Scotland at the

time and they went off and

won the Strathpuffer. Around about that

time Ben also paired up

with Isla Short at 10 Under the Ben

when he was 13 and she was 14

and they won the mixed

pairs that year and they

were both this size, you know. Well, Isla's still this size!

But Ben was short as well at the time, so yeah

that was a fantastic day that day.

We definitely won the mixed

pairs and I think we won the

pairs overall and everyone couldn't

believe that our combined

age was 27. Ben and I got

into this big argument about whether

having the fastest lap

got the most kudos or having

like the average consistent laps was

better because I had the

fastest lap and he was always

a little bit insecure about me being

faster than him because I was

a girl and I remember once on

a training ride Keith was giving him some

stick because he was

apparently riding like a girl

and I think Ben always had a bit of a

chip on his shoulder about

this and I quite liked

nudging, nudging those buttons.

Once kids get to kinda around about 14, 15

years old they kind of start

to decide whether they're going to go

down the road side of things

or mountain bike so Ben decided

to go road and track. He was multiple

Scottish track champion in

the velodrome. He also won lots

of road races as well. The pinnacle would

be the British National Road Championships

in 2013 at

the under 16 age category.

[Music]

Keith and the iCycles team have each done

one lap so far but

things are not going to plan.

We've had a couple of mechanical issues

early on. Mark's a good

lad, very fit so I let him

do first lap and send the young guns out

first and he was back here

20 minutes later, tyre hanging

off the back wheel, slashed sidewall, game over

so we then sent Lewis out

and then Mark went out again

after that with changed wheels and the

second wheel that we put

on his bike, the freehub went

about halfway around the track. So then he

had to run about half the

course and lost another 20

minutes so yeah it's been a it's been a

poor, been an unlucky start these things

can happen to anybody

but yes it's a bit unlucky, that's all.

At a full lap behind the Fish Face team

Keith tries to reassure

the other three riders all is not lost.

It's an uphill task though

to persuade them not to throw

in the towel. The strong gravity of a

warm pub and a cold pint only

100 meters away from the pits

is very tempting.

Bike racing is 24 hours, anything can happen,

we can only go up from here!

Well done Steve.

[Music]

Good man. Thank you

[Music]

Good man. Thank you very much

[Music]

Thanks very much. Great job

[Music]

Oh, what a descent!

[Music]

I met Ben through our parents, my dad and

his dad met through like

long distance cross-country

racing in Scotland. They were rivals for

a really long time.

Originally me and Ben would go along

to support our dads when we were maybe

like 10 years old and we would always

just spend the whole

day sitting in the camp chairs making

sure our dads had enough

food for when they came through

after their lap and we would just chat

and be bored together and I

think we started to want to

be involved with the racing rather than

just being on the sidelines.

Eventually yeah we did a couple

races where we both got to race with our

dads and then when we were

maybe 13 or 14 me and Ben actually

did a long distance cross-country race as

a pair. I had such a fun

time discovering the world of

racing. There was no pressure there,

it was just me and my best

friend going off with our dads

having these adventures. Eventually that

kind of morphed into our

dads travelling up and down the

country with us, supporting us at bigger

events like national

cross-country events. From there

I ended up going into racing mountain

bike at a really high level and Ben

transitioned onto the

track and the road and he won a British

title there before he had to give up

racing so for us it was

just this really special friendship that

had formed around our

love of mountain biking and

that's why he's a really special person to me.

It was around about

the age of 13-14 when I first

started in the SXC series which is the

Scottish mountain bike series for

cross-country. I wasn't

very good at the mountain biking: it was

in the name when it said

"mountain" and the mountains

didn't agree with me, I didn't like

going up hill! Probably more laziness than

genetically hindered

at the time so I swiftly moved away

from that and moved into the

road scene which is more where

I made my place in the cycling world at

that age. That's actually more where my

friendship blossomed

with people like Ben and Mark et cetera

was on the road side of

things. At the time there was a

velodrome called Meadowbank and

Meadowbank was an outdoor velodrome very

similar to this just a lot

more wind and rain involved with it. Most

of the time to be honest with

you we'd go over to Edinburgh

and you'd end up getting there and about

five minutes before

you arrived at Meadowbank

all hell would open and the rain would

call it off and you'd be

sitting there underneath the

tunnel with all the rest of the youths and

the parents sitting there

just miserable as always

and then obviously this lovely place

opened up when it started

getting cold out in the Scottish

winters I thought come find refuge in the

warmth of the velodrome. Yeah, so

that was kind of originally

where the friendship and also the

competitiveness blossomed between us all.

Ben and I kind of came

through the ranks together especially

around the last year of Youth B which

was under 14s and then

the first year of Youth A, which was under

16s. At that point I started

taking it a bit more seriously

started thinking more about what I was

training for and what races I

was aiming for. And I could never

get my head around why I was not as fit....

I couldn't last as long in the races as

people like Mark and Ben

He always seemed to just have that last

maybe that last 10 laps on

a race just had that little bit up on me.

Just when I was getting

into the bike racing I

think Ben had already been in it

for a bit, so he was right, you know right

at the top and I looked up

looked up to lads like that

and yeah just grew really close with Ben.

I thought he was always

just so - as quick as he was and

as a hitter he was at that age I just

thought he was always

just so genuine and good with

everyone. Everyone seemed to like Ben.

He was very emotionally

intelligent for his age. He understood

if his pals were down or they were

going through kind of a bad

time or they were annoyed

about something or they were just in a

really good mood. He kinda

He could always mould himself to however you were feeling.

He was full of life.

He was a great chap and he

was always really excited to

be doing what he was doing and happy you

know and he always had time

for you as well, he always wanted to chat.

But then the switch also went

when I saw, because I got to

race with him and train with

him he was always just an animal and I

can laugh at the attacks and

stuff that he did because he

was just hard and he would just fight and

then he could you know

get off the bike and he'd be

joking and having craic with you.

[Music]

Slowly but surely the team chip

away at Fishface's lead

pulling back a few minutes a lap. After

11 and a half hours of

riding things are starting to look

a little bit more positive, particularly

after Keith finds out that the

Fishface team have dropped

their slowest rider in a bid to hold them off.

[All still alive?] Yeah. Moving, moving up.

Yep. Just checking you're still in there.

Just trying to get to work now.

This is where it starts.

Decided we gave 'em enough of a head start

We're gonna start playing now.

[Music]

When the Glasgow Velodrome opened,

The Chris Hoy Velodrome opened in Glasgow.

The top four boys in

Scotland at the time,

youths in Scotland, got

invited to a big event,

the opening event

called the Thunderdrome.

And Ben was selected

to lead out Chris Hoy

in the team sprint.

The other riders in the

team were Jason Queally

who was the 2000 Olympic champion,

gold champion from Sydney Games,

and also John Paul, who

happened to be the junior track

world champion at that time as well.

So it was a fantastic achievement to be

able to lead them out

and in front of a packed

audience inside the Velodrome.

I was so happy to support him and just,

we would, yeah, we'd go

everywhere and anywhere.

We did like some sort

of crazy things in the past,

whereby on a Friday night,

we would be in Leazes Park in Newcastle,

doing a crit race on his road bike.

So he'd finish school

straight down to Newcastle,

do the race, he won the race there.

Then we'd jump in the van,

we'd go across the A69 to Carlisle,

we'd kip in the back of the van,

we'd then pick up

friends that were coming

down the motorway to go to a

national cross country race

that weekend, we'd jump

in the back of their van,

we'd go to, I think we

went to Wales that time,

go and race a mountain

bike race at the weekend,

and then back to school on a Monday

morning type of thing.

Things like that were

just normal occurrence.

So yeah, it was good days.

[Music]

Finally, in the early

hours of Sunday morning,

with only a few hours of the race left,

iCycles have just

nudged ahead of Fish Face.

So yeah, we've now completed 20 laps,

and things have gotten a

lot better through the night.

Obviously after the

disasters at the start,

it's been a challenge

getting back to where we are now,

and it's been worth it.

So pretty much for the whole 20,

well, whatever it is, 19

hours or something so far,

it's been at best a heavy, misty drizzle.

The worst I think Steve got the worst conditions

about one o'clock this morning.

It came down quite heavy,

but other than that, it has been pretty

damp the whole time.

Miserable, wet.

After that heavy rain at one o'clock,

the course changed

completely and it started to cut up.

There's a lot of mud on the track now.

You've got to be careful

in some of the corners.

It's easy getting into

a two-wheel drift.

I've ended up in a

ditch the last lap there,

just came round the corner, hit

some mud, and off the track.

You know, we're Scottish, we like the wet, so...

we're coping all right

At least it's not

kind of cold and miserable,

it's still reasonably warm, so.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

It's cold enough.

We were almost a lap down after two laps

because of mechanical problems,

but we've pulled that back and we've come

from probably last

up into the lead now,

Boys have all put in amazing laps.

Lap times have been

incredible, full gas every time,

and thankfully no more mechanicals

since those early problems.

So, yeah, we're in the driving seat now,

so we're just going to try and keep it

steady now through to the end.

You've just got to be careful.

So, yeah, you can't win it in the next lap,

but you could lose it.

[Music]

Keith, he's done so much work with CRY.

And, you know, so many of Ben's friends

have done charity runs

and different things

like that to raise money.

And there is this, you know, people

didn't know what CRY was before,

and I think Keith should have a lot of

credit for raising awareness of that.

This is a thing that

touches so many people's lives.

Nationally in the UK, there's 12 young,

sudden cardiac deaths every week.

And that's quite a statistic that not a

lot of people realise.

And 80% of those young people will have

no symptoms or knowledge prior to death.

So it comes completely out of the blue.

So we fall into the 20% where obviously

we knew there was a risk there,

but for 80% you have no idea.

It's particularly important

for young, sporty individuals

because if you're going to push yourself

to the limit in any sport

and you're going to raise your

heart rate on a regular basis,

if you've got an underlying issue,

then that's going to

possibly cause you a problem.

I've been training endurance sports for

the last couple of years,

and recently I came into

a couple of complications.

I was back to training

and being in the gym.

I got home where I began to have what I

can only assume was

some sort of panic attack.

Decided to go online and see if I could

uncover what would be the cause of this

if I'd been over training, if my body was

under too much stress.

I also have a family

history and heart conditions,

so thought it would be a good idea just

to get everything checked.

Then I found CRY.

They've then had a pop-up cardiac screening

and they've been more than helpful to

check everything over for me.

Keith and his wife Margaret,

they lost their son

to this awful tragedy,

which is the only way

you can describe it.

And then they wanted to then try and get

as much information

about why that happened.

And also if there's any way that they can

prevent it happening in the future.

So thanks to them,

thanks to their fundraising,

thanks to them getting the money to be

able to just fund a screening like this,

we will see on average

200 people in two days.

And the information that

comes out is incredible.

It's picking up the

electrical activity in the body.

The vast majority

we find are normal ECGs,

However, on rare occasions where there is

a concerning symptom

or any abnormalities on an ECG, sometimes

that requires further investigation.

Usually that can be

with an echocardiogram,

which is an ultrasound

scan of your heart on the day.

But on occasion, we do

refer you on for further tests.

The vast majority are

reassuring and normal,

but they're just as a matter of

precaution to look for any conditions

that might put you at risk of sudden

cardiac death or sudden cardiac arrest.

Apart from screenings,

they also do, there's research,

there's bereavement support,

parliamentary pressure

groups to try and get MPs

to sign up to a

national screening programme,

because at the moment NHS don't do

national screenings,

which again leads back to why people like

us feel the need to fundraise

so that we can put the screenings on.

If there is something

there that needs dealing with,

then, you know, there

are procedures in place,

be it medication, be it

surgeries, be whatever,

that can actually prevent somebody from

passing away earlier than they should do.

And I believe in that

passionately, actually.

We're hoping that we're going to make a

difference to other families

and hopefully they won't have to go

through what we've gone through.

Then it means that we can hopefully

prevent things like this happening,

things that happened to Keith and

Margaret's beautiful son.

I think Ben'll be

looking down at that and going,

well, it's all going to mean something.

If it saves two

or three other people.

[Music]

With laps taking between 40 and 50

minutes to complete,

every minute counts.

The guys are very tired now

after nearly 20 hours of riding

and a small mistake or tired

legs could cost them the race.

Mark has just come in and isn't impressed

with his latest lap time.

Nah, that was shit! [No that's not shit] [Well done] It's just I had nothing in my legs

You brought it back. Was that about 50 [minutes]?

No, high 50s

I should have mentioned the Pitman,

Norman's done a sterling job.

The Normanator, also known as the fifth member

Part of having a good race

strategy and a good pit setup

is that you really need a good pitman

in your pit. Luckily

we've got the Normanator.

Yeah he's fantastic, he's always there,

just knows what you want,

nothing's too much trouble.

He's been non-stop all night, he's not

shut his eyes and without good pit

support then this is impossible.

Not a dry eye in the house!

Just look after their bikes, look after

their morale, feed them

water them,

Keep their moral up really. I've done a

few of these now.

The pride you've got in these guys is

unbelievable. We started in last

position, but they always

pull it out, they never panic,

they're just very professional riders, and get on

with it and reel things

back in and always bring it home,

so really, really proud of them.

So yeah after we lost Ben in July '18,

there was... things like

bike races and training and

that kind of thing didn't seem very

important anymore. Ben was

a massive influence in my

drive, determination.

I was really struggling with motivation and

it was about April time

one of Ben's friends phoned me up with a

challenge that he wanted to

take on and he wanted to fundraise

for Ben's fund.

We started this idea didn't we?

Or well, maybe I started the idea.

Yeah you did, it was all your fault!

He explained it was the

National Three Peaks Challenge which is

normally what happens is

people climb Snowdon, Scafell Pike

and Ben Nevis, the highest three

mountains in England, Wales

and Scotland and get driven

in between and the challenge is that you do all

three within 24 hours.

Yeah, you moved the goal post and

you said oh no we're not going in the car

You came up with the

splendid idea of giving

ourselves 48 hours, we're gonna do the

450 miles on bikes rather

than the car. Ah that was it.

I thought all right are we? Okay, I was

already committed.

It seems bonkers, eh?

It was. It was bonkers. So it started at Snowdon,

three in the morning

yeah, get up the hill,

pea soup, couldn't see a thing.

Apparently there's lovely views from up there.

We'll have to go back and have a look.

Yeah, came down, got on

the bikes, it was just light

at that point. Yeah next stop was the Lake

District. Just a long 300 kilometers

wasn't it? So 180 miles

to get to the Lakes. So we set off

through the day, a few people joined us

didn't they? So yeah seven

of us went up that one. Yeah. We come

down off of that, had a

wee sleep in the van. Yeah so

that was yeah we come back at I think

midnight we got back down on that one.

One of us were feeling

good, one of us feeling not so good. Had

a sleep then that reversed.

And then we got on our way up

out the Lake District up into Dumfries,

through Glasgow, up over Glencoe.

Eventually we got to

Fort William. There was nine that went up

the Ben. Nine, but there

were people around as well.

There was lots of people at the bottom.

We managed to nail it in 47

hours 15 and in doing so we raised

a huge amount of awareness for CRY.

Oh, we were broken at the end of

that. Yeah that's the toughest

thing that I've ever done. Yeah oh definitely

Through and through.

Then we got back down from there,

a couple hours kip and then off into

town for some breakfast.

And then I think we sat in the

afternoon and had a few beers. We went for

curry in the evening and

then fell asleep at the curry

table. And that was it, job done. That was it.

We raised over 10,000

pounds on that one which was

fantastic. So there's like 200 young

people that will get screened on the on

the back of that alone.

All well worthwhile. Yeah. All that pain's

gone now isn't it?

I don't remember that at all. Well we're

already thinking about the next one aren't we so. Eh?!

You've got Mark who has

for some reason thought

running 30 marathons was a good idea.

Mark set up a 30 marathons in 30 days of June.

I thought it'd

turn more heads and it'd be more impressive

me running than doing a big

bike ride.

He even managed to get me to run a couple and I don't

do running so that wasn't pleasant.

It wasn't pretty either.

As much as it was just running like it

just it brought so many

people together. It brought

so much awareness for CRY.

Phenomenal job. Absolutely

phenomenal. To the point where

I think it was number 29 he ran a three

hour 11 minute marathon.

which is just bonkers.

I was not a runner and my feet and knees

definitely paid for it in the first week

or definitely the first

half and then my body did start to to get

fit and adjust to it which

was cool to see as well.

It also raised over 25 000 pounds and when

you put that into the

terms of how many people young

people that can screen then that's 500

young people that get a screening on the

benefit of that on the

back of the back of those marathons.

[Music]

I've just finished a 24 hour. As a pair

As a pair. Yeah me as well.

The weather hasn't been terrible but it's

not been brilliant either so

slippy and steep. Quite a challenge. It was

very tough. The course was

really hard at 500 meters

vertical climbing. It got quite muddy at

points. We still managed

to come 4th in the men's

pairs so I think we did okay on that front.

We did alright!

I've just finished up at Kielder here and for sure

the toughest 24 course I've done. Yeah it's

a bit of everything, heaps of

climbing over 400 meters of

climbing so yeah definitely the toughest 24 course I've ridden

Well done that man!

With iCycles and Fish Face battling

throughout the night and tired legs

everywhere Mark finally

brings home the last lap within the

cut-off but have they done enough to keep

their deadly rivals at bay?

Again, everyone pushed themselves really

hard and a bit of competition.

I mean, this is summer in Kielder.

It looks very like winter in Kielder.

The male quads, the winner of the Ben

Forsyth trophy is...

[...ticking clock...]

...is iCycles.

[Cheering and clapping]

The male's quad get

this nice big trophy here.

And if you're wondering why

we've got this nice big trophy.

Kieth here, obviously

multiple winner of Strathpuffer,

and this event several times.

Twice they came here with iCycles and

they just dominated the quads.

So then his son died unexpectedly,

which is quite emotional.

So I made this Ben Forsyth

trophy in that honour.

Well, then Fishface come and just blew

everyone away last time

and then they took the win.

But I was delighted after many

mechanicals this time to see that

iCycles got back to the top

and they take it home.

[Muisc and clapping]

Just delighted that they got there in the end

from a tricky start

They've had a hell of a race.

To bring it back from the

place that was just amazing.

Yeah!

Nice.

Thank you, mate.

[Music]

Looking back now, I probably at the time I didn't really recognise it but

now Ben was a huge role

in me making it of what I did.

Ben makes me think a lot about everything

and helps me massively every day.

Like just trying to be happy or being

more positive about stuff.

He was just always the

most positive guy going.

He pushed me and if it wasn't for that,

I probably wouldn't have got picked up

to the way I have done now and moved into

those kind of GB ranks.

I think Ben's legacy is

really powerful with me.

Ben helped me to fall in love with

mountain bike racing

and I also realised that he

had to let go of this dream.

And I guess in some sense I feel a little bit

of a responsibility to carry

that dream forward for him.

The day that Ben died, I

was in Italy at a World Cup.

I was like crying when I warmed up for my race

and then I just felt like really

numb on the start line and

I'm not really sure like why I decided to

race, but I raced and

I got a career best.

And I'm still like wondering how on earth my brain

and my body was capable of that.

I really, really felt like Ben was with

me in that race and watching over me and

I think that was so comforting for me.

I just so wish that he knew about that

race result and maybe he does somewhere.

But that's like one of the most special days

to me in my whole life

because I felt like I did it for him and

me and our friendship.

And I know he's watching everything that I'm

doing, just he'll always

stick with me about life

just because he lived it to the max. So

why can't everyone else?

[End titles music]