Marathon man
Grand National hero in North Korea test
In his time, Richard Dunwoody has won the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the Grand National twice and the King George VI Chase four times. He has trekked to the North and South Poles, climbed the highest peak in the Andes and walked the entire length of Japan. This is someone who has achieved rather a lot.
But it is what he is doing this morning that might well cast the former champion jump jockey as the most unusual sportsman in Britain. He is running 26 miles through the streets of Pyongyang in the North Korea Marathon. Provided he completes the course in under 4½ hours (and, given his athleticism, fitness and reservoirs of determination, that is a given) at the end of his race he will be allowed to run into the North Korea National Stadium, where there is a chance that he will receive his medal from that well-known nuclear missile enthusiast Kim Jong-un.
Not that Dunwoody is particularly motivated by the idea of meeting the North Korean life-president.
“I’m just glad it’s happening,” he says of the race.
“I applied ages ago and I’ve been following the news, assuming I had no chance of getting there. Back in February, it was reported that someone in President Trump’s team had said there was an 80 per cent chance of the US bombing Pyongyang before the end of March. Now Kim’s gone to China and has set up a meeting with Trump, so things have thawed. Touch wood, it’s going ahead.”
As he takes a moment off lastminute training to speak to The
Sunday Telegraph, Dunwoody insists he is not a trailblazer, a pioneer or torchbearer. Indeed, he suggests getting a place on the run through the capital of the world’s most diplomatically isolated state took no more than a couple of keystrokes on his computer.
“I went on a website and paid the $150 [£106] entrance fee,” he says. “Plus, I had to pay for a visa and obviously for the flights out there and – hopefully – back. It was all done through a travel agency in Beijing.”
Since the race was opened to foreigners in 2000 (though there was a brief Ebola-related ban in 2015) about a dozen non-elite outsiders a year get to run it. Entering the race, Dunwoody says, was rather easier than landing a place on the perennially oversubscribed London Marathon.
True, there were a couple of small caveats: he had to reveal his profession (presumably former champion jockey was deemed a more acceptable calling than investigative film maker); plus he had to agree to wear the official, uniform race T-shirt. Otherwise, everything was straightforward.
“Part of the package includes a 10-day trip after the race, all round North Korea. Obviously, we’ll be under supervision. I’m told we’ll have two North Koreans chaperoning us at all times. We’ll be getting a briefing in Beijing before we go on to how to behave. I understand there’s something of a dress code: no jeans.”
Which makes the place sound less like a country and more like an old-school provincial nightclub.
But however uncomplicated the trip might be, it still begs the question: why? There are marathons all over the world, in the most exotic of locations, from the Arctic Circle to the Sahara.
There are more than 1,100 26-mile yomps taking place this year in the United States alone. So, why did he feel the need to traipse round perhaps the least welcoming, least architecturally impressive conurbation in the world?
“Curiosity,” he says. “I was doing a charity walk last year across Japan and North Korea was in the news a lot while I was there. I hadn’t done a marathon since I ran Belfast in 2004, and I really wanted to do another one, but I wanted to do it somewhere unusual. And I mean really unusual. When I found out there was one in Pyongyang I just thought: why not?”
He will be raising money for the Injured Jockeys’ Fund and the Ebony Riding Club in Brixton, which provides riding opportunities for disadvantaged children and young adults. He was going to collect for a third charity, but when he approached them they declined his generosity. They said they could not condone him contradicting Foreign Office advice to British citizens that they should not visit North Korea.
“Well, the FCO advice is only go under extreme circumstances,” he says. “I’m not sure a marathon counts as extreme circumstances. Though actually I think the most risky thing will be the flight there. Air China has just cancelled all flights in and out of the country. Now the only way in is from Beijing on North Korean Airlines. I can’t imagine they use the most up-to-date of aircraft.” The reaction among his fellow former jockeys when he told them he was doing the race was universal.
All of them suggested he might profit from psychiatric counselling. But it was the response of his fellow champion jumper Sir Tony McCoy that Dunwoody found the most telling. “AP [McCoy] said to me, ‘Why do something if you can’t win?’ The truth is there’s absolutely no chance of a 54-year-old retired jump jockey winning the race.
“But I just enjoy it. Everything I’ve done since I retired – the walks, the runs, the climbs – is about a sense of challenge, sense of purpose, achievement. Though I think the thing that is most similar to racing is that having done something, you’re immediately looking for the next thing to do.”
One thing Dunwoody does not do much of these days, however, is go anywhere near a horse. For someone who was steeped in riding from his childhood (his father was a trainer), he shows very little inclination to climb back into the saddle.
“I saw what being a trainer did to my father, so I’d much rather do what I’m doing now,” he says.
Which means instead of schooling horses over the jumps, he earns his living from photography and from leading adventure tours to obscure parts of the world.
And his new schedule means when he is on his post-marathon trip round North Korea he will miss the Grand National, the race he used to commentate on for the BBC until the corporation lost the contract in 2012.
It seems an awful long way to go to avoid the racing. “Well yes,” he smiles.
Unless, of course, it is shown on North Korean television.
To support Richard Dunwoody’s fundraising effort, visit https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/RichardDunwoody1
‘The only way in is on North Korean Airlines and I can’t imagine it’s the most upto-date of aircraft’