BNU helps doctors to achieve new world record in charity row and raise vital children’s cancer funds

Staff and students from Buckinghamshire New University’s sports department have helped a group of rowers to achieve a new world record and raise £169,000 for a children’s cancer hospital ward.

The Thanks a Million challenge saw anaesthetist, Gihan Ganesh, and a team of rowers, including several doctors, take it in turns at London’s Paddington Station to row one million miles on a static rowing machine in 59 hours, breaking the previous Guinness World Record of 62 hours.

The fundraiser helped Mr Ganesh to raise £169,000 – a £1,000 for every day his daughter received treatment for a rare pelvic tumour when she was a year old – for the Momentum in Fitness charity, which provides exercise therapy at Piam Brown children’s cancer unit at Southampton General Hospital.

BNU’s Senior Lecturer in Sports Science, Dr Mrk Homer, was approached by Mr Ganesh prior to the joyous occasion, for advice on training with a view to a new research study analysing the team’s physiological response to the event.

Joined by colleague Callum Mapley, Graduate Teaching Associate in the University’s Human Performance Lab, and two sport and exercise students, Poppy Cooper and Dan West, Dr Homer led his team to collect heart rate and blood lactate data from the rowers over the following three nights and two days. Sports therapy lecturers, Megan Robson and Laura Richards, and a team of students were also on hand to offer much needed massages and support as the sleep-deprived challenge posed issues such as blistered hands, gastrointestinal distress, and the obvious fatigue.

Dr Homer added: “Being a part of unique and impactful challenges like this shows our students the ways that sport science can be used away from classic athletic pursuits, and also offers a chance to be involved in some applied research.”

Mr Ganesh told the BBC afterwards: “We are utterly, utterly broken but it was worth it. We did really well as a team and this is our way of saying thank you."

Speaking to BNU, he added: "It was great to have the BNU involved with our charity world record attempt. The sports science team were so professional and brought a completely different view of our challenge! The sports therapy students and their lecturers were also great and helped us have at least a moment of feeling more human and helped fix some very broken people!"