No challenge is worth this

I AM so sorry for the family of Nick Thomas, who died only a mile from the French coast in an attempt to swim the Channel. Yet why, oh why, did he try it?

There have been some 3,500 successful Channel swims, one of which was performed by Mr Thomas himself. He had absolutely nothing to prove but apparently he completed his last swim in a wetsuit and wanted to try without one.

Edmund Hillary stood on the top of Everest in 1953 knowing he had achieved something no man had before. In 1875 Captain Matthew Webb puffed the last few yards of his swim from Dover to France, with the same knowledge. Roger Bannister ran over the finishing line and found he really had accomplished a four-minute mile, something thought next to impossible.

Men such as Donald Campbell on water, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine on mountains and Captain Robert Scott on polar ice have died in attempts to set records and conquer the seemingly unconquerable, driven by curiosity. Their families could feel some pride beneath the grief. But now too many people die doing what has already been done many times.

Nick Thomas’s fate should give pause to anyone contemplating a risky challenge. CALLING an English golfer a “Pommy git” is neither derogatory nor racist says the New Zealand Broadcasting Standards Authority after investigating a complaint by a viewer over the term used by a sports commentator.

Oh, if only the Kiwis ran our broadcasting. How much more relaxed, humorous and proportionate the BBC might become.