A former rugby player turned CEO who said he “got lucky” getting into a private school thanks to a rugby scholarship is raising money to help people from disadvantaged backgrounds by skating from Edinburgh to London.
Liam Chennells, 33, from Tring, Hertfordshire, will be inline skating the 500-mile journey from the start of July for Future Frontiers, an education charity which aims to provide guidance and opportunities to disadvantaged young people.
“The reason why I believe in it so much is because I’m not from a privileged background myself,” Mr Chennells, founder and CEO of global software business Detected, told the PA news agency.
“I got lucky and got a rugby scholarship to an amazing private school when I was 13 – if I hadn’t have got that I don’t know whether my career would have ended up going the way it did.
“A lot of people don’t get lucky, so I want to raise money for a charity that is helping those people.”
His passion for empowering young people stems from his belief that “kids are often just told, kids aren’t asked questions, and asked how they feel and what they want life to be”.
He added: “They can’t just be told what they need to do. They need to be given the opportunity to make decisions.”
Mr Chennells’ training for the challenge has involved running marathons and ultramarathons as well as completing 100-mile cycles and skating journeys.
He added that weighing 17 stone has caused him difficulties as he is not built “like a typical endurance athlete”.
However, the former rugby player is no skating novice, saying: “I used to skate a lot as a kid. And then when rugby started to become really serious as a teenager I’d come in with a cast on my wrist, and they’d be like, ‘stop jumping down the stairs in skates you idiot’.
“I stopped and I hadn’t skated since, so I bought a pair in late October and committed to covering the 500 miles in only six days.”
Despite the difficulty of the challenge, Mr Chennells expressed his confidence in his ability to complete it through the “amazing support from friends and family”.
He added: “Everybody that knows me says, ‘well, of course you’re going to finish it’.”
Mr Chennells has already raised over £10,000 and thanked people for “believing that this was a stupid enough thing that warranted sponsorship”.
He added: “If you’re going to ask people for money when there’s a cost-of-living crisis, it’s got to be the sort of thing that makes people think ‘that’s ridiculous!’”
To find out more about the challenge, visit www.justgiving.com/fundraising/liam-chennells.
