Findlay joins forces with Sinfield for Tigers’ charity feat
Leicester have no fixture this weekend because of the Premiership’s expansion to 13 teams – just do not call it a rest week for the table-toppers. Having carved out a healthy advantage over chasing rivals with eight consecutive wins, Tigers are also leading the way for gruelling charity challenges.
Kevin Sinfield’s 101-mile, 24-hour run from the East Midlands to Leeds on Monday and Tuesday captivated the nation. Will Findlay, one of Leicester’s strength and conditioning coaches, completed the second half of the grind. Indeed, he has spent the whole of November raising money and awareness for a cause close to his club.
Earlier this year, he fielded a “horrendous” phone call from Ben Youngs to inform him that Tiffany, the wife of his brother Tom, the former Tigers captain, was fighting a serious illness. Findlay had come to know the Youngs family while growing up in Norfolk.
As a scrum-half himself, who was part of the Tigers academy, he idolised Ben. Nick Youngs, the brothers’ father and an ex-england and Tigers half-back, would visit Langley School a couple of evenings a week for coaching sessions with Findlay.
Some years later, upon hearing of the deterioration in Tiffany’s health, Findlay sat down with Sinfield. The idea of 30 halfmarathons in 30 days was born and, when Leicester announced that Tom would be taking indefinite leave from playing to support Tiffany, he could begin.
“I’ve always been fit but until seven weeks before the challenge, I hadn’t run more than 7km,” explains Findlay, who has raised more than £23,000 for a charity chosen by the Youngs family.
Variety has distracted from the pain of a punishing month. Tom accompanied Findlay, with Tiffany watching, for a special day at Gresham’s School in Norfolk. Just this week, fresh from their England exploits, Ben Youngs and Freddie Steward drove back to Leicester for half-marathon number 24.
Findlay is now in Wales, where his immediate family live. Two difficult legs stick in the memory. Knee pain on day 19 caused “awful grief ”. The following Monday, Findlay joined Sinfield.
“I told him I’d do three one-hour stints,” Findlay says. “Kev was running 7km every hour and that would make up my half-marathon. I joined him at the halfway point, 12 hours in. He was really hurting.”
Findlay lasted the distance. At the end, he and Sinfield shared a heartfelt hug on the Headingley pitch. The moment was captured by BBC cameras, with both men giggling as they came away. “He just said, ‘You’re absolutely nuts, get in the ice bath’,” Findlay reveals.
The preceding hours had brought the most emotionally draining conditions yet. But they had also reinforced why Findlay is determined to finish off this feat for Tiffany and Tom Youngs.
“At about two or three in the morning with Kev, I’m not afraid to say it, I was bursting into tears while running.
“I look back now and know that it was thinking of the family that got me through it.”