Bear Grylls’ World’s Toughest Race: Aussie contestants in ‘toughest race ever’

Think Survivor on steroids, then you’ve got the smallest idea about an 11-day race set up by mad man Bear Grylls to torture participants.

“This is the toughest, gnarliest adventure race ever staged.”

That’s how Bear Grylls describes it, and he’s not wrong.

Don’t let the picturesque Fijian location — surrounded by turquoise waters and covered by lush, tropical rainforests — fool you.

The aptly-named World’s Toughest Raceis designed to break people and it offers no exceptions to the Australians who put their names forward to take part.

The brainchild of ex-SAS soldier Grylls and Survivor creator Mark Burnett is 671km non-stop. Competitors are given 11 days to finish and they’re expected to sleep for just 15 hours. Total.

“We have to force people to sleep or else they’ll die,” Grylls told news.com.au.

“It’s the most extreme adventure race ever staged in human history. To run something like 671km non-stop. It’s unbelievable.”

The sheer scale of the production, which premiers on Amazon Prime Video on August 14, is mind-boggling in itself. Two-hundred cameras film competitors from 12 countries as they cross oceans on outrigger canoes and climb the equivalent of Mount Everest.

Those who take part are elite athletes but they’ve never seen anything like this. Which begs the question: Why would somebody travel halfway across the world to take part in a race they know nothing about?

RELATED: ‘Bear Grylls saved my life’ Grandma says

Bear Grylls during the 2019 Eco-Challenge adventure race in Fiji on Tuesday, September 10, 2019. (Corey Rich/Amazon)

Bear Grylls introduces competitors to the race course in Fiji. Picture: Amazon

RELATED: Bear Grylls accidentally appears naked on Instagram

THE CONTESTANTS: ‘WE KNOW HOW TO SUFFER’

You won’t meet five better qualified individuals for a physically, mentally and emotionally-draining 11-day race like this.

One has been a paramedic for 15 years, one served with the Australian military’s special-ops squad, one has been a firefighter for 15 years, one has been running adventure races for a decade and one is an ultrarunner. And they’re all on one ridiculously fit Australian team.

“All of us are well positioned to know how to suffer,” Team Aussie Rescue captain Samantha Gash says in the days before the race begins.

On the other end of the experience scale are a group of Aussies that, well, as they put it, “have something to prove”.

Elijah Mayr, who is part of Team Mad Mayrs, says it best: “People probably have set the bar low for us.”

US adventure race veteran Mark Macy, who has competed in every Eco-Challenge before the popular race took a hiatus 18 years ago, was diagnosed with Alzhiemer’s disease nine months prior to the race. But he would not be deterred.

RELATED: Bear Grylls to tackle Australia’s far North

Turquoise waters and sharp coral reefs during are part of the course during the World’s Toughest Race. Picture: Amazon

The race pushes competitors beyond their limits. Picture: Amazon

Neither would twin sisters Tashi and Nungshi Malik who have climbed Everest before and who continue to defy gender stereotypes in conservative India.

“They would race for the window seat when they were kids,” their father, who is racing with them, tells me about their competitive drive.

Nungshi says: “We don’t know what to expect, or how difficult this is going to get.”

Well, it’s going to get very hard. If it wasn’t, Grylls would have failed the challenge Burnett set for him years ago when the idea to create the most difficult race on earth was first raised.

“He said to me, ‘I want you to make this bigger, badder, harder than before,’” Grylls says of the conversation.

“I said to him, ‘I’m really going to set the bar at a crazy level.’ And this is the result.”

Speaking with reporters in Fiji ahead of the race, Burnett described it like this. “It’s like Jurassic Park. This is not a reality show.”

He said the race is a “genuine expedition with a stop watch”.

A diver retrieves an item from the ocean floor as part of the challenge. Picture: Amazon

Competitors on the ocean as part of the 11-day race. Picture: Amazon

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN ENDURANCE

Standing on the fine, white sand of a tropical atoll, the teams are tiny specks in the distance. They are paddling on a craft that none of them have ever seen before today, let alone climbed aboard.

It’s part of the cruel and unusual punishment dished out by race designers whose job it is to create an even playing field, no matter what one’s specialist discipline.

Teams race along the sand in the searing heat to a checkpoint that allows them to drink water and catch their breath.

The Australians are exhausted. And they still have 10 days to go. Soon they’ll be climbing mountains, tackling white water rapids, trekking through thick jungle.

“They’ll endure some of the most extreme conditions they’ve ever encountered,” Grylls says.

“The Fiji course is truly epic. It’s incredibly demanding and will force our competitors far out of their comfort zone as they race against themselves, their competitors and the fiercest elements of mother nature.

“Only the teams that work together can ever hope of making it to the finish line.”

The author travelled to Fiji as a guest of Amazon Prime. World’s Toughest Race premieres on Amazon Prime Video on August 14.

Follow World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji:

Facebook: @AmazonPrimeVideo

Twitter: @ToughRaceTV

Instagram: @ToughRaceTV