777 Countdown.........................................................29 Days To Go

FALKLANDS WAR OVER BLIND DAVE TRIP

10-03-2008

Black Country runner Blind Dave Heeley has had to re-jig the route of his seven marathon challenge again – this time because of the fallout from the Falklands War.  He’s had better news on the TV front, with Central finally agreeing to film his global challenge.

Dave recently had to switch the African leg of his seven-day expedition from crisis-torn Kenya to Tunisia (see link here). 

Now he’s swapping Santiago in Chile for Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

The latest problem has come about because the Argentine authorities won’t allow a private jet chartered by Dave’s sponsors Guide Dogs to fly through their airspace.

It’s part of a tit for tat response to the restrictions placed on their own citizens who want to visit war graves on the islands they call the Malvinas.

To get around the problem, Dave will fly into Port Stanley from Rio, and return there for the second of his runs.

“My physio has been to Rio and reckons that there’s a seven or eight mile flat run along the ‘prom’ overlooking the Copacabana, so I might just do that three or four times” he said.

“It will make a better location for the cameras, and to be honest more people have heard of Rio than Santiago.”

It’s also been confirmed that Central TV will send reporter Eric MacInnes around the world to follow Dave, giving welcome regional and national exposure to his extraordinary challenge.