BBC Documentaries

Wild Man to Ironman (2018x314)

Uitzenddatum: Dec 19, 2018

Nobody thought Mat Pritchard would survive into his 40s. Now, Wales's favourite party boy and daredevil star of TV's Dirty Sanchez has cleaned up his life and turned into an endurance athlete, and he is about to take on his biggest endurance challenge yet. He is turning the coastline and the border of Wales into one enormous triathlon route in celebration of five years since the day he turned his life around. His aim is to be the first person to swim, cycle and run around the country he calls home - and to do it in just 14 days. If he can stay on schedule, battling fatigue, the weather and illness, he aims to finish this epic journey by running the Cardiff Half Marathon. But for Mat, this is not just an endurance challenge, it is a journey of self-discovery. This is Mat's story, from rags, to riches, and ruin to redemption. From his humble beginnings in Cardiff, Matt found he had a unique talent for the 'outsider' sport of skateboarding. His perseverance saw him become a skateboarding legend, who along with his close friends developed a reputation for not just skating but playful antics and crazy daredevil stunts, which they filmed. They eventually found TV fame and fortune with Dirty Sanchez. Despite global celebrity, Mat was struggling with his mental health, and his hedonistic lifestyle found him trapped in a dangerous and destructive whirlwind of booze binges and drug addiction. Eventually, he embarked on a quest for self-redemption, which led him from being a wild man to an ultra-fit vegan ironman. Told by Mat, and through the first-hand accounts of family and friends, the film hears how he went from a nobody, to star, to trainwreck, to an inspirational record-breaking athlete.