Bear Grylls cannot be killed (adapted photo: Tina Tiller / supplied)

Pop CultureAugust 15, 2020

In the World’s Toughest Race, Bear Grylls is the gift that just keeps on going

Staff writer

Bear Grylls cannot be killed (adapted photo: Tina Tiller / supplied)

It’s Amazon Prime Video’s new show about the most extreme adventure race in the world, and host Bear Grylls wants us to enjoy it from the comfort of our couch.

I tried to kill Bear Grylls in You Vs Wild, really I did. I made him swim with crocodiles, I forced him to eat termites and then I ditched him at the bottom of a spider-invested canyon, hopeful we’d seen the last of him. It was to no avail. Bear Grylls can’t be stopped, which makes him the ideal host for World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji, Amazon Prime Video’s new documentary series about extreme athletes who are determined to just keep on going.

The toughest race in question is the Eco-Challenge, a 671km endurance contest around Fiji that last year attracted 66 teams from 30 countries. The race is built on three basic rules: respect the wild, embrace the hurt, and never leave a team member behind. It’s a brutal quest that sees the teams paddle, run, bike and climb non-stop for eleven days and nights, rarely stopping to sleep or eat, constantly pushing themselves to their physical and mental limits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4rq5BZIni8

World’s Toughest Race follows these athletes for every step of the Eco-Challenge, getting so close you can practically smell their sweat. Not every team will finish. Some will be forced out by injury, others will fail to reach checkpoints by the required cut-off times. I thought my school cross-country was hardcore, but World’s Toughest Race takes any physical effort you’ve ever made, laughs in its face and then throws a paddle board at it to show us how it’s really done.

Somehow, amid all the blood, sweat and tears, old mate Bear becomes the beating heart of the show. He’s there to motivate the teams and explain the race to the viewers, keeping us informed with an intense mix of relentless enthusiasm and endless hyperbole. “The enemy is the wild,” he says, staring straight down the camera into our unfit souls, “plus the terrain, the river and each other. And also your nerves”. That’s a lot of enemies to overcome, but we all saw the DIY enema episode of Man vs Wild. The guy knows what he’s talking about.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a Grylls?

Grylls is a human dynamo who brings energy and pace when everyone else is knackered, and when the going gets tough, Grylls gets going. He pops up from nowhere, backflipping out of helicopters and surprising contestants on river banks. “Respect!” he says, high-fiving competitors as they drag their weary bodies to the next checkpoint. I wish Bear Grylls had jumped out from behind a tree at the halfway mark of my school cross country, because I’d have definitely cracked the top ten, mostly just to get away from him.

Grylls teamed up with Survivor creator Mark Burnett to executive produce World’s Toughest Race, and the show does feel a lot like an extended episode of Survivor. There’s the same sweeping aerial photography and beating-drum soundtrack, and more of the beautiful slow-motion sequences of athletes powering through thick mud and tropical storms. Everyone’s trying to outwit, outplay and outlast, but it’s a more supportive, positive atmosphere than you’ll ever see on Heroes Vs Villains.

Like Survivor, World’s Toughest Race would be nothing without a diverse cast of fascinating characters. The Eco-Challenge appeals to people from all walks of life, with varying levels of adventure race experience. In the show’s quieter moments, we meet competitors like New Zealand’s Nathan Fa’avae (“the Michael Jordan of adventure racing”) and Team Onyx, the first ever all-African American team to participate in Eco-Challenge. We meet the father and son team dealing with the dad’s Alzheimers diagnosis, and Team Unbroken, made up of ex-soldiers whose combat service left them with life changing injuries.

Try and tell me that’s not Luke Wilson in the middle.

These teams experience the same tough conditions, but their races are all different, and that’s the beauty of World’s Toughest Race. The journey of the 66th placed team is just as important as the teams in the lead, and by getting to know the athletes, we appreciate the sacrifices they’ve made just to get to the start line. We’re part of their team. We’re beside them as they hit every emotional high and heartbreaking low, and for every team that’s racing to win, there are others for whom simply finishing will be the sweetest victory.

It’s probably a good thing I couldn’t knock off Bear Grylls in You vs Wild. World’s Toughest Race wouldn’t be the same without his constant enthusiasm and energy, and at 10 episodes, he’s definitely running a marathon, not a sprint. The show celebrates the world’s strongest, fiercest and bravest sportspeople, and while World’s Toughest Race isn’t always a nailbitingly tense watch, it’s still incredibly inspiring and exciting. Just like the time Bear whipped up that DIY enema, it’s one hell of a ride.

World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji is available on Amazon Prime Video now

Keep going!

OPINIONPop CultureAugust 14, 2020

Alice Snedden: Why I wanted to speak to Speak Up For Women

Alice Snedden

Guest writer

Opinion: Why is JK Rowling so mad about periods, and why are so many people mad at JK Rowling? Alice Snedden waded into the volatile waters of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism for the latest episode of Bad News.

After the horrible year we’ve had, the last thing anybody needed was for JK Rowling to make it worse by ruining Harry Potter. But that’s what happened in June when she publicly objected to a headline using the term “people who menstruate” and in doing so outed herself as a huge disappointment.

Upset that the article used inclusive terminology instead of saying “women”, Rowling knowingly entered into a public discourse that refuses to acknowledge the existence and dignity of trans men and trans women. People like her argue that gender is determined exclusively by your chromosomes. It’s an argument that seems rooted in science, but is in fact based on only the most rudimentary understanding of sex and gender and a fundamental misunderstanding of the complexity of biology.

Rowling was defiant, however, going on to release an essay defending her position. And while she firmly rejects the label of a TERF, I think her actions suggest otherwise.

TERFs, or Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, first came to my attention a few years ago when I began to get more educated about intersectional feminism and transgender issues, and had friends who transitioned. It very quickly became clear for me that you could not be a feminist if you did not include trans women in your feminism. Trans women are women, it’s about as simple a concept as there is. To me it seemed like the most obvious take possible and the absolute bare minimum position to hold. So it was baffling to see a group of cis women, who identified as feminists, not hold the same view.

I’m consistently confused by the stance of other women who exclude trans women from their feminism. To exclude trans women on the basis of biology is scientifically flawed, but to exclude them on the basis of having once presented as a man not only suggests there is only one universal experience of being a woman – it reinforces that there is a dominant experience of being a woman and for too long, that “dominant” experience has had to fit the confines of straight white cis women.

The feminist movement has a history of being exclusive – in the past it’s refused to acknowledge the struggles of women of colour, it refused to fight for the rights of queer women and now some are refusing to support the rights of trans women. For all its intention of being a forward thinking political movement that reinforces equality, feminism is still too often a rigid structure that oppresses the people it should be defending.

I was curious to chat to the self-described “gender critical” group Speak Up for Women, because I wanted to better understand their point of view. Unfortunately, as you’ll see in the episode, they weren’t keen. Without their input, I have been forced to reach the following conclusion myself.

If you are a person who claims to be a feminist, then you must stand up for trans women and you must protect them. Disproportionately, trans women are subject to violence, they face routinely hostile environments, and they need a feminist movement that makes the reduction and elimination of this harm a top priority. If you’re not on board with this, you’re not a feminist – you’re part of the problem.