The team at Suffolk based Pier travelled to the Olympic Stadium to support Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity which had a number of runners taking part in a special event that was organised to thank supporters of the Gold Challenge and test out the amazing new stadium in preparation for the Olympic Games.
The Stadium was filled with thousands of runners and charity supporters, some of whom were lucky enough to be given the chance to run on the famous track before the main event in the summer.
The charity mascot race was a real spectacle, with Help for Heroes’ Hero the bear to Oxfam’s Archie the goat competing against Rainbow Trust’s George the hippo, from the television show Rainbow, in a 100m sprint (or at least as close to a sprint as was manageable in a big furry costume!)
Rainbow Trust had some very special runners in their races including the rugby star Austin Healy and the Daily Mail’s Alex Kay. The jewel in the race though was lovely Ben Morris who is cared for by Rainbow Trust and completed the race in his wheelchair. Ben’s beaming face lit up the big TV screen and the whole stadium got behind him cheering him throughout the race and over the finish line.
Launched in November 2010, the Gold Challenge is a charity challenge in which people take on Olympic and Paralympic sports to raise money for their chosen charity. It has two main objectives: to inspire people of all ages and physical ability to play sport, and to raise substantial sums of money for charity. Gold Challenge works in partnership with the British Olympic Association, ParalympicsGB and Sport England, and forms part of the official mass participation legacy programme for London 2012.
