First International ‘Winner’ of Tough Guy

Rob Howard / 31.01.2011

The annual Tough Guy challenge had its first ever international winner’in its 26th year when Knut Hohler of Germany crossed the finish line in a time of 01.11.34.

Having lead all the way around he finished well ahead of second placed Andrew Sims from Surrey, who crossed the line 01.15.22, but the organisers later declared he was disqualified for not completing the course as he “did not traverse the Single Rope Dragon obstacle and fell off the ropes in the Colosseum challenge”.

The official verdict is “he did not beat the Tough Guy™, he went for a run to stay ahead of his rivals”, but its not a great shock as officially none of the 5000 competitors completed the full course and its traditional that the first across the line is always disqualified. That’s Tough Guy for you!

Not that anyone will care after their epic day out on a substantially revised Tough Guy course. The results will show their places but its finishing the course and claiming the famous horse-brass medal that counts.

This year the opening ‘Country Miles’ run was substantially different, staying within the grounds of the Tettenhall horse sanctuary, where the race is held, and the big new addition to The Killing Fields obstacle course was the aforementioned ‘Colosseum’. This was a figure of 8 route on a pond on slippery and submerged boardwalks, linked together by rope swings and overhead nets, and it was one of many places to get very wet and very, very cold.

There was a thin layer of ice on all the water so it fell to Hohler and those chasing him to break the ice, but the day did gradually warm up and for the later competitors the sun came out. This helped to thaw their frozen limbs a little, but the continuous nature of the cold water obstacles was probably the biggest challenge of the day.