CONRAD STOLTZ

Conrad Stoltz, known fondly as “The Caveman” for his imposing 19-metre frame and super-human sporting achievements, is our world champion triathlete. He’s won five South African Triathlon titles, five All Africa Triathlon Championships, and has four off-road XTERRA World Championship wins. This year Stoltz bagged the inaugural ITU Cross Triathlon World Championship title, another off-road triathlon race.

He’s also competed in the Olympic Games, in both Sydney and Athens, and at 37 is racing stronger than ever. He’s currently in the US powering his way to new records, having just won his 40^th title in the XTERRA series, with a strong chance of achieving his goal of a fifth XTERRA World Championship title.

Born in Lydenberg in Mupmalanga province on 23 October 1973, Stoltz grew up near Pretoria. He rode his first bicycle without training wheels at the age of three, and started racing BMX at seven.

Coming from an athletic family he was also involved in running track and field events at school, running competitively from the age of 10.

Stoltz got his first road bike when he was 14 – the same year he competed in his first triathlon, together with his father, Gert. As a junior athlete, Stoltz was South Africa’s junior dualthlon and trialthlon champion in 1990 and 1991.

At 18 Stoltz launched his career as a professional triathlete. He had some impressive wins early in his career, with five South African and five All Africa titles and raced six seasons for French clubs Montpelier and Cahors in the mid-1990s.

In 2001 Stoltz’s career took off with a win in the legendary Chicago Triathlon and taking the XTERRA series World Championship title in the US. This was his rookie year in the competition, with no sponsor. He won the race with a 10-minute lead, and successfully defended his title in 2002.

After setbacks and injuries in 2005 and a near career-ending crash in 2006, Stoltz reclaimed the XTERRA World Championship title in 2007 and again in 2010, and has been USA Champion eight times since his first win in 2001 - only missing the 2004 and 2006 titles.

To balance these highlights, Stotlz has had his share of lowlights, including mechanical failures, punctures, and race or pre-race injuries. Not all of these could stop The Caveman. He cut his foot three minutes before the start of the XTERRA race in Richmond, but still managed to win the race before being whisked off to hospital to have eight stitches, and a major operation four days later. 

But Stoltz’s worst injury was in 2006 when a serious crash left him with a broken back and seven breaks in his wrist – one day before an important competition.

An avid black and white photographer and flyshisherman, Stolltz recently said that he’d met his match. He didn’t mean someone who cycled, ran or swam faster than he does; he was announcing his engagement to Liezel Wium. The happy couple are due to tie the knot on 11 November this year.

Now in his tenth year of racing mostly in the US, Stoltz is based in Stellenbosch, near Cape Town. He lives on a diet of potatoes, eating about eight potatoes a day and lots of meat, and spends three months here in intense training before going over to the US to compete, spending six months based in the US racing, with a second home base in Bend, Oregon.

The remaining three months of the year Stoltz spends with his father, nicknamed Tarzan by Stoltz’s friends, and mother Liesbeth, on their farm Roodewalshoek in Mpumalanga.

Stoltz says his biggest regret is not training with a coach earlier in his career. He feels the first seven years he was either over trained, injured or both and regrets the waste of talent – something he clearly has an abundance of. Now armed with two decades of experience and a great coach in South African Ian Rodgers, Stoltz enjoys mentoring young athletes.

Acclaimed as a popular, down-to-earth and humble athlete, Stoltz is living up to the meaning of his Germanic surname. Stoltz means proud – and there’s no doubt that all South Africans can be proud of this triathlete and ambassador.

His future plans include getting off-road triathlons accepted as a sport for the next Olympics – and to win it at age 41! When he’s done with professional triathlons Stoltz plans to continue to participate in triathlons for fun, to stay involved in product research and development for the sport, and to spend more time on his much-neglected properties, which he calls his pension fund.

RYAN SANDES

Ryan Sandes has blazed his way into the trail running record books and the hearts of most sport-loving South Africans. Our talented, yet humble ultra-marathon runner has broken records, and challenged the boundaries of long distance trail running.

As one of the top endurance athletes in the world, one would expect that Sandes, also know as “Hedgie” (short for hedgehog, after a short hair cut went unexpectedly spiky), excelled in athletics at school – but that is not the case. The Cape-based South Africa College Schools’ pupil played cricket, rugby and water polo, but never really bothered with athletics. 

In 2006, in his final year at the University of Cape Town, Sandes stumbled upon distance running, or perhaps it’s more appropriate to say that distance running found Sandes.

On a whim, Sandes, then a self-admitted party animal, signed up to run a full marathon. The only way he could get a trip to Knysna to party with his mates was to join them on a run. The half marathon was already full, so Sandes signed up for the full marathon without giving it much thought.

With minimal training in the preceding month Hedgie finished the 42km race in the top 20 with a time of 3 hours 20 minutes. The running bug bit, and soon the Sandes was spending weekends trail running instead of partying.

During an Internet search on trail runs and endurance races, Sandes chanced upon the 4Deserts.com website. Deciding it looked like a cool challenge, he signed up for the 250km seven-day Gobi Desert race, known as the Gobi March - one of the toughest endurance races on the planet.

In 2008, aged 26, with just a couple of year’s running experience, Sandes took his first self-supported ultra-marathon in China’s harsh desert by storm. He not only won the race, but he won every stage over the seven-day race.

Remarkably, still employed full time as a quantity surveyor at Faircape Property Developers, Sandes repeated this feat again in 2008, in the 250km Sahara Race in Egypt’s formidable desert, once again winning all six stages as well as the overall race title, in his second rough-country endurance foot race which is billed to challenge competitors to go beyond their physical and mental limits.

Sandes, also known fondly as the Sandman, took a break from the 4Desert challenge in 2009, to enter the Namibia Desert Race where he placed second and the 2009 Jungle Marathon, which he won in record-breaking time.

In 2010, Sandes, Runners World South Africa’s hero for 2008, 2009 and 2010, entered the third of the challenging 4Deserts series, the Atacama Crossing in Chile. He again won all six stages and the final leg of the seven-day 250km race and smashed all time records to become the first person to complete a 4Desert race in less than 24 hours, finishing almost 6 hours ahead of the person who placed second.

With a strategy of breaking long races into small, more achievable mini-goals Sandes also won every stage and the overall race of The Last Desert race in Antarctica becoming the first person to place first in all four 4Desert Races and to win every stage of all four races.

2010 was a busy and successful year for Sandes. He also won third place in the mixed pairs, with running partner Linda Dorke, in the eight-day Gore-Tex TransAlps race in Europe.

Now 29, Sandes, says he is just a regular guy with a passion for what he does – running. He’s currently focusing on one-day 100km and 100-mile (160km) races, with his main focus-race for this year being the Leadville 100-mile ultra-marathon in the US.

In March 2011 Sandes called off a Fish River Canyon record attempt the due to high water volumes, and he’s still flying South Africa’s flag proudly, placing third in the North Face Ultra Trail Race through the Blue Mountains down under in Australia.

He was disappointed with his a podium near-miss of fourth in the Zugspruit Ultra in Germany recently, and says he still has a lot to learn about European running conditions.

He’ll be running the body-pounding Leadville Trail, also known as The Race Across The Sky, through (and over) the heart of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado on 20 and 21 August as well as The Planet – Nepal series later this year, and has his sights sets on some of the most gruelling distance trail running courses, including his ultimate challenge, the 217km Bad Water ultra-marathon in Death Valley in the US, recognised as the most demanding and extreme running race offered on the planet.

With Sandes’s incredible mental strength and fine running form, he’s likely to take his awe-inspiring, extreme running success to even greater heights as he moves from running through deserts to perfecting his form in races with elevations of over 3000m.

DEON MEYER

Having penned eight thrillers, seven of which have been translated into up to 25 languages, top South African crime novelist Deon Meyer is attracting local and international attention, rave reviews with comparisons to John le Carre, and a growing string of awards including the prestigious Barry Prize for Best Thriller of 2011 in the US.

Born in Paarl in the Western Cape, Meyer (now 53) grew up in the Klerksdorp in the gold mining region of Northwest Province. The middle child, growing up with two brothers, Meyer dreamed of being a cowboy, a private eye, a detective, a fire fighter, and a heroic soldier. It was the example of his parents that encouraged Meyer to consider writing as a career – and combine several of these dreams into a stellar literary career.

“My mother and paternal grandmother were always reading when they had a spare moment. My late father loved books equally, but as the breadwinner, did not have the time to indulge. He did, however, always make time to take his three young sons to the town library, sometimes three times a week,” said Meyer.

Meyer wrote his first attempt at a novel at the age of 14 and reportedly blackmailed his brothers into reading it. Although Meyer can’t remember the title, it’s housed in the literary museum in Bloemfontein, and Meyer jokingly says he took his siblings advice and didn’t write fiction again until he was in his 30s.

After matriculating from Schoonspruit High School in Klerksdorp, Meyer went on complete a Bachelor of Arts at Potchefstroom University with majors in English and History.  

A Mozart and rock ‘n roll fan, Meyer started his career as a journalist for Die Volksblad, a daily newspaper based in Bloemfontein. His career includes public relations at the University of the Free State, as well as advertising copy writing and internal communications for Sanlam.

Meyer also completed his honours in history and masters in creative writing and went on to combine his love of motorcycles and writing as manager of special projects at BMW, before concentrating on novel writing as a full time career.

Writing in Afrikaans, Meyer’s first novel, Wie met vuur speel, was published in 1994 and is the only one of his works not to be translated (because it wasn’t good enough for an international audience according to Meyer). Since then Meyer has written seven more novels and two books of short stories, with a new thriller, Sewe Dae or Seven Days, due to be released in November.

A prolific writer, Meyer produced a book every 18 months for the first few years, but since writing full-time from 1998 he’s averaged one book a year – “including time for research, weighing up story options and worrying that it will work”.

Meyer lives in Melkbosstrand on the West Coast with his wife Anita and four children: Lida, Liam, Johan and Konstanz. He works an average of 12 hours a day, but “only six to eight of creative writing. Admin, meetings, signings take up the rest,” said a quick-humoured Meyer.

Meyer spends considerable time studying life in South Africa, setting scenes, creating believable characters, driving masterful plots and passing social comment on our life and times – and this professionalism has earned him growing popularity as a crime thriller writer list of awards and accolades. 

Devil’s Peak won the Martin Beck award from the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers and the French translation won the Readers’ Award from CritiquesLibres.com for Best Crime Novel or Thriller in 2010 and Thirteen Hours won the prestigious American Barry Prize for Best Thriller of 2011 was well as the Boeke Prize Fanatics Choice Award.

His latest book, Trackers, was the best selling novel in South Africa for eight weeks running and reviewers say Meyer has “moved into John le Carre’s class” and that the book, which has recently been released in the UK, US and Canada, is “mesmerising”. However, when asked which book he thought was his best, Meyer answered that none of his novels are perfect.

Extremely humble, Meyer attributes a lot of his success to the “incredible people who have made it all possible: my wife Anita, my agent Isobel Dixon, every publisher who have risked the substantial investment of publishing me…”

“As wonderful as it is to receive recognition, it has never been a challenge or a motivator. But every book is a unique and substantial challenge.” Perhaps the key to Meyer’s success is the fact that he enjoys what he does and believes that writing should be fun.

CHILIBOY RALEPELLE

At the age of 25, with more than five years playing at Springbok level, popular South African rugby player Mahlatse Ralepelle, more commonly known as Chiliboy, has already had the sports career and leadership opportunities that most people dream of, including the honour of being the youngest person, and the first black player, to captain our green-and-gold national rugby team.

Born in Tzaneen, a small town in the Mopani district of Limpopo province, Mahlatse (which means the blessed one, in Sotho) leant to play rugby at a young age under the guidance of his grandfather, also a rugby player in his youth.

His athletic ability gained Chiliboy a place at Pretoria Boys High School, a school with a proud rugby tradition. He was a member of the school’s Under 15s squad in 2001, and went on to play for the South African schools team in 2002 and 2003 and played for the South African Under 19s in 2004 and quickly built a reputation for himself as one of South Africa’s most promising junior players.

In 2005 he made his international debut for South Africa’s Under 19 side before playing his first professional senior level game for the Bulls in the same year. In 2006 Chiliboy captained the Under 21 Springbok squad in France at the 2006 Under 21 Rugby World Championships, taking his team through to the finals before they were defeated by the host nation.

This fast forwarded the muscular hooker’s career and earned him a place on the Springbok senior squad with a selection for the 2006 Tri Nations Series. He made his international debut for the Springboks on 26 August 2006 against the All Blacks, playing at his home grounds at Loftus Versfeld during the 2006 Six Nations Tournament and got to achieve the dream of captaining the Springbok team for one game in the same year.

He’s played consistently at provincial level for the Blue Bulls since 2006, represented the Bulls in the international Super 14s since 2005 and been part of the Springbok squad since 2006 but Chiliboy has had a bit of a stop-start career that has been plagued by injury and the need to share field time between strong players, allowing him only about 20 caps in five years. But he’s currently in fine form and appears to be about to live up to the promise and potential he showed in the junior ranks.

2011 looks set to be the year Chiliboy is proves his ability. After the dark cloud of knee injuries and testing positive for a banned substance in the UK in 2010 (from which he and South African winger, Bjorn Basson, were cleared –the banned substance was part of a nutritional supplement provided to the Springbok team), the powerful player has emerged with determination to prove he’s more than South Africa’s third-choice hooker.

The drug scandal, and troubles he was exposed to as a result, proved to be an important, if uncomfortable, learning curve for Chiliboy. “What I learned was that you need to focus on the present and do as much as you can in the moment, because once it's taken away from you, you can never get it back,” he said in a recent interview with the Sunday Times.

He’s dropped from 108 or 109kgs to 105 – which he calls his fighting weight, giving him more speed and agility and has changed his game plan. His new philosophy is that you have to throw the first punch – that first hit can carry you through and give you the confidence you need says Chiliboy.

Chiliboy has just signed up for another two years, playing hooker in the Bulls pack, putting his muscle and a good throwing arm behind his Loftus Versfeld team, at least until October 2013.

 He’s currently playing exceptionally well and turned on a burning performance against the Sharks in Durban in June, winning the team prize for the most tackles of the match (15 in 55 minutes). His hot performance has continued, with Chiliboy scoring his maiden Test try against the All Blacks in Wellington as part of the Tri Nations games in July.

Chili as his team mates call him, is currently playing brilliantly according to Blue Bulls coach Pine Pienaar and performed well in recent tests against Australia and New Zealand – and is believed to be a strong contender for selection for the South Africa’s Rugby World Cup squad in New Zealand in September, where his regained form and confidence could help boost the Springbok’s performance and add zest to Chiliboy’s career as one of South Africa’s bright rugby stars and ambassadors.

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CAMERON VAN DER BURGH

As a one of the top short distance swimmers in the world, specialising in 50m and 100m breaststroke events, Pretoria-born Cameron van der Burgh has had his name splashed across the sports headlines many times. He’s won titles at the World Championships, the Commonwealth Championships, and holds the world record title for 50m breaststroke short course and long course as well as the 100m breaststroke title. He has held double world cup titles but perhaps his proudest claim to fame is that he is South Africa’s first home-trained swimming celebrity and record holder.

Van der Burgh began his swimming career late by general champion standards. At the age of eleven, having done very little swimming, Van der Burgh took part in his first inter-house championship at school and won. Building on his natural talent for swimming he went on to represent the Northern Transvaal B team in 1998, and moved up to the A team the following year.

In 2000 he was selected for the South Africa team for the first time, and in 2007 the former Pretoria Crawford College student grabbed the attention of the international swimming community, at the age of 18, when he won his first major international medal – bronze in the World Championship in Melbourne, Australia in the 50m breaststroke.

In 2008, at the age of 20, Van der Burgh took part in his first Olympics and went on to became Africa’s youngest world record holder, breaking several world records in short succession. In Moscow in November 2008 the Northern Tigers swimmer beat Oleg Lisagor’s 50m breaststroke record of 26.17 seconds, clocking in at 26.08 seconds. The very next day Van der Burgh beat Ed Moses’ 2002 record of 57.47 seconds for the 100m breaststroke with a time of 56.88 seconds.

A few days later, in Stockholm, Van der Burgh clocked in under 26 seconds in the 50m breaststroke, becoming the first person the in the world to break the 26-second barrier with a time of 25.94 seconds. His stellar performance won him the award for Best Male Swimmer Overall in the FINA-Arena World Cup (short course).

He also won a silver medal in the 100m breaststroke and a bronze in the 50m breaststroke at the World Championships in Manchester in the UK in 2008.

Driven to perfect his natural swimming talent and achieve 100% efficiency, Van der Burgh returned in 2009 to win the coveted gold medal in the 50m breaststroke race in the World Championships in Rome, setting a new world record; and also won a bronze medal in the 100m breaststroke event.

An avid golfer and amateur photographer, Van der Burgh put in another strong performance in the 2010 season winning two gold medals (50m and 100m breaststroke) at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, India, as well as a gold in the 100m and a silver medal in the 50m breaststroke events at the 2010 World Championships in Dubai.

2010 was also the year the Audi A1 ambassador made his modelling debut, his ready smile, friendly personality and toned swimming physique capturing more hearts as Mr February in Cosmopolitan’s Sexiest South African Men Calendar.

Van der Burgh won gold in the 50m and broke the championship record in Barcelona, Spain in June this year, before winning two bronze medals for the 50m and 100m breaststroke at the World Championships in Shanghai. He also brought home two gold medals from the All Africa games held in Maputo, Mozambique recently.

Unlike previous South African swimming champions, Van der Burgh is the first champion-material swimmer not to head to the US or elsewhere overseas to train. Although he has been training recently under Tokyo-based Norimasa Harai, Van der Burgh does most of his swimming training at the Olympic-size pool in Hillcrest, Pretoria.

An avid coffee lover who professes to hate training, but thrive on the enjoyment of racing, Van der Burgh, at the age of 23, has already ticked off most of his major swimming goals – breaking a world record and winning gold at the World Championships and the Commonwealth Games. He now has his sights firmly set on the 100m breaststroke event at the Olympics in 2012 – the shortest swimming course recognised at the Olympic Games. He has been training hard to improve his stroke and endurance.

The amiable Van der Burgh is also focused on giving back to the community and the sport. He’s helping mentor up-coming younger swimmers such as Chad le Clos and Charl van Zyl and sharing the tricks of the trade to speed them on their way to medals in the 2016 Olympics.

PROF JONATHAN JANSEN

Internationally renowned education academic, Professor Jonathan David Jansen, is one of South Africa’s leading intellectual experts. He has a solid academic grounding, is a captivating speaker, a master story teller and is known for his insightful and forthright comments on education issues… but it is in his more recent leadership roles at Universities that his true wisdom and leadership colours shine through with compassion, humility and deep understanding.

Much like his counterpart Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Jansen has been flown against conventions and risen above the challenges of being classified as a Coloured under the Apartheid era, and as part of his own growth is helping South Africa rise above the barriers of racism.

But let’s start at the beginning: Jansen was born on 29 September 1956 in the picturesque town of Montagu in the Western Cape between the Robertson wine district and the semi-desert area of the Little Karoo. He grew up here and in a township in the Cape Flats, and his youthful outlook was shaped by upheavals and the loss of family land and property due to forced removals.

Jansen, who attended Sullivan Primary School, then Steenberg High School, describes himself as an average student in the lower grades of high school – more interested in playing soccer, swimming at Muizenberg and cycling around with his mates.

Encouragement from Paul Gallant, Jansen’s high school Latin teacher and middle-distance running coach, changed his life. The high expectations Gallant set for his students made the young teenage Jansen believe he could achieve things despite the tough environment of the Cape Flats – and he has risen to great heights as a result.

Jansen graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of the Western Cape, completed his teaching qualifications through UNISA, and went on to obtain his masters from Cornell University in the US and his doctorate from Stanford University and is internationally regarded as one of the top researchers in the field of education.

A former biology teacher, Jansen served as Dean of Education at the University of Pretoria from 2001 to 2007, and was a Fulbright Scholar to Stanford in 2007 to 2008. He is an Honorary Professor of Education at the University of the Witwatersrand, and has received an honorary Doctor of Education from the University of Edinburgh and the Cleveland State University.

His keen interest in academic education has seen Jansen undertake more than twenty international commissioned research and evaluation projects including curriculum support to the Namibian Government and an assessment of curriculum change in Zimbabwe after independence.

He has also worked as an editor or on the editorial board for numerous journals published locally and internationally and boasts publications on education policy and curriculum change in academic and scientific journals and books, and has presented numerous research papers at local and international conferences.

In 2008 Jansen co-authored a book with Saloshna Vandeyar, called Diversity High: Class, Colour, Character and Culture in a South African High School and in 2009 he published Knowledge in the Blood which is a heartfelt and effective approach to achieving understanding and transformation in a divided society, based on Jansen’s experiences at the University of Pretoria.

The book considers why young Afrikaners, born at the time of Mandela’s release from prison, hold firm views about a past they never lived, rigid ideas about black people and fatalistic thoughts about the future. Jansen had planned to convey a story of how white students change under the leadership of a diverse group of senior academics, but Knowledge in the Blood ultimately became an unexpected and moving account of how these students in turn helped changed him – and helped him start to overcome his own racial hurt and fears.

On 1 July 2009 Jansen took up his appointment Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the University of the Free State (UOFS) at a time when racial tension was at its highest. The campus had been rocked by the infamous Reitz Four video and the students were polarized into clear racial camps. But in a fairly short space of time this remarkable man, armed with the lessons he’s learnt and the courage of his convictions, has been able to encourage students to meet each other half way – to the point that the UOFS, a former bastion of Afrikaner learning, is fast becoming a living model of genuine integration worth replicating across the country.

This gifted orator, facilitator and leader has, through listening and introspection, found the key to real transformation. He’s encouraging his students, and each of us, to step forward and be part of the transformation journey; part of the solution – and he’s leading by example.

LEWIS PUGH

Born in the UK in on 5 December 1969, a young Lewis Pugh, who would go on to become a world renowned pioneer swimmer and conservationist, moved to South Africa with his parents, Gordon and Margery Pugh, at the age of 10.  South African became his second home for the next 17 years.

At the age of 17 he embarked on the first of his swimming feats by completing the swim from Robben Island to Cape Town in three hours. Pugh, more recently known as the human polar bear for his numerous extreme cold water swims, followed this by completing the first swim across Lake Malawi with Otto Thaning covering the 25km in 9 hours and 50 minutes, and swimming across the English Channel in 14 hours and 50 minutes at the age to 22 while studying for his Law degree at the University to Cape Town.

A St Andrews College and Camps Bay High School scholar, Pugh went on to become a maritime lawyer in London, and a reservist in the elite British Special Air Service before deciding to follow his dreams and push the boundaries of what is considered possible.

He abandoned his career which included reading international law at Jesus College in Cambridge to became a swimming pioneer, achieving feats similar to his childhood heroes of Scott and Hillary, except in water rather than on land.

Pugh achieved an impressive selection of world firsts in the swimming world. He became the first person to swim around the North Cape, the most northern point in Europe and the first to swim the length of Sognefjord in Norway, the longest fjord in the world.

He was also the first person to swim around the Cape of Good Hope and to swim around the entire Cape Peninsula.

In 2005 Pugh broke the world record for the most northern long distance swim, deep in the Arctic Ocean and undertook the longest polar swim - one mile across Whalers Bay in the South Shetland Islands.

He went on to win a gold medal in the 500-metre freestyle event at the World Winter Games in Finland in 2006. The same year he became the first person to achieve what is considered the Holy Grail of swimming having completed a long distance swim in every ocean in the world.

But Pugh is probably best known for his one kilometre swim in an open patch of sea at the North Pole in July 2007 wearing only his trademark Speedo, swimming cap and goggles.  He plunged into the minus 1.7 degree Celsius water to draw attention to the impact of global warming, the melting of the Arctic sea ice and the plight of his favourite animal, the polar bear. That swim in freezing waters that few would survive took 18 minutes and 50 seconds to complete.

An accomplished and compelling motivational speaker, Pugh was awarded a fellowship at the New York Explorers Club, Rotary International’s Paul Harris Fellowship and Sports Adventurer of the Year Award by the French Sports Academy in 2007.

In 2008 he founded the Polar Defence Project which went on to win the Best Project for the Environment at the inaugural Beyond Sports Awards in 2009.

2009 was also the year Pugh received the highest honour in South Africa – the gold cross, or Order of Ikhamanga – for his exceptional sporting triumphs, humanitarian feats and creating consciousness about the negative effects of global warming.

Pugh learnt the importance of a well-prepared support team on his early expeditions. He included renowned South African sports scientist, Tim Noakes, on both his arctic and Antarctic expeditions. It was Prof Noakes from the University of Cape Town who first recorded Pugh’s unique ability to raise his core body temperature by two degrees Celsius before diving into cold water – and called it anticipatory thermo-genesis.

In 2010, Pugh was appointed a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, and went on to complete his hardest challenge yet – a 22 minute and 51 second swim across Lake Pumori, a glacial lake on Mount Everest at an altitude of 5,300 metres. Pugh succeeded on his second attempt after realising his usual tactic of pushing determinedly and fast through a cold-water swim could not work at high altitude.

Now a sought-after speaker, Pugh, who describes himself as an explorer, athlete and polar protector, has just published his first book. Achieving the Impossible is a riveting and inspirational account of Pugh’s life, and how he came to believe in his passions and dreams and dared to achieve the impossible.

It is reassuring to know that Pugh, with his first hand experience of goal-setting teamwork and leadership, thinks that saving our planet is not impossible. He’s complete a number of other firsts, like swimming the entire length of the River Thames to raise awareness and hopefully the World Economic Forum is right in believing he has “the potential to shape the future of the world through his inspiring leadership”.