Australian wheelchair athlete Kurt Fearnley arrived in Papua New Guinea with a simple message ahead of his incredible crawl along the 96km Kokoda Track: Nothing worth doing is easy.
Fresh from his fourth consecutive New York wheelchair marathon win last Sunday, Fearnley, 28, will set off on the daunting 12-day challenge on Sunday.
"Kokoda has been in the back of my mind for a long time. I think it's a pretty huge part of who we are as a mass of people," Fearnley told AAP in Port Moresby.
"My job is to represent our country week in and week out and I really wanted to get a better understanding of that and to do it with my family," he said.
Fearnley with his Kokoda Spirit trek team, coach Andrew Dawes and 15 family members will use his hands to propel himself along the length of the track, over arduous terrain that has taken the lives of four able-bodied people this year.
"It's going to be hard, but I would have kicked myself if I turned 50 and didn't give it a crack," he said.
"Nothing worth doing is easy, nothing can be lost in trying something like this".
Fearnley, arguably the world's greatest wheelchair athlete, hopes to add Kokoda to his already long list of achievements from Paralympic gold to climbing Sydney Centrepoint Tower's stairs.
"People with disabilities don't just look up to people with other disabilities," he said.
"When I was a kid I wanted to be (swimmer) Kieren Perkins, and I wanted to race him at the Olympics.
"And it's turning these days because there are some young kids that are saying some pretty nice things to me," he said.
But is the Kokoda challenge a wise way to recover after a 42km marathon?
"I pulled up really well. I've had a couple of days to let the muscles heal," he said.
"I get here (PNG) now and I don't have any sore spots. I've been counting them one by one and don't have any. I'm just ready to start," he said.
Front page
RSS Feed