Thai cave rescue became adventure of a lifetime for divers

The two Australian cave divers who saved a children’s soccer team in Thailand have an admission to make.

Cave divers Richard Harris, left, and Craig Challen. Picture: James Elsby

Richard Harris and Craig Challen haven’t found god, become consumed by the vagaries of fate, marvelled at their own awesomeness nor lapsed into an existential funk at the fact that life will never be as exhilarating again.

Having masterminded one of the most remarkable rescues the world has seen, the two Australian cave divers who saved an entire children’s soccer team from an ­inundated cave system in Thailand want to share their “dirty ­little secret”.

“The dirty little secret is that it was simply a bloody awesome ­adventure,” Dr Challen told The Weekend Australian.

“We get asked all the time if we have become consumed by what we did, and whether it’s left some kind of gaping void in our lives. People seem crestfallen when we tell them the answer is no. It was great fun. We were lucky to do it.

“We don’t have to battle with our demons. It’s almost like ­people expect or even want us to have suffered during this. They get this disappointed look when you say: ‘It was actually really good.’

“What concerns me even more is that they expect the boys to have suffered through all of this, too. It’s regarded as not normal if you can go, ‘Well, that was just a great experience’.”

Dr Challen and Dr Harris were reluctant converts to celebrity but decided to lean into it following the attention generated by being front and centre in one of the biggest media stories of the modern era, and their continued elevation to fame as joint Australians of the Year for 2019.

READ MORE: Pulling out was not an option | Thai cave rescuers named Australians of the Year | Two ‘nobodies’ take centre stage

Having initially avoided media coverage after the rescue, they are now on a national speaking tour for the release of their book, Against All Odds, with the foreword by Titanic director James Cameron; there is talk of their story becoming a Hollywood film.

Dr Harris, the Adelaide anaesthetist who came up with the crazy-brave plan to inject the 12 trapped schoolboys with ketamine and use adult divers to chaperone their carefully bound bodies through the complex cave system, remains almost professionally unfazed by the magnitude of his achievement.

The book documents how Dr Harris and Dr Challen angled their way into becoming involved in the rescue through the tight-knit and tiny international cave diving community, only to end up spearheading the release of the 12 members of the Wild Boars soccer team and their young coach.

Harris says the nature of the project became acutely human at the moment he and Dr Challen first met the trapped boys inside the cave before their eventual release.

“I remember very clearly ­coming through the water after pushing for three hours through the river and feeling really nervous about meeting them for the first time,” Dr Harris told The Weekend Australian.

“Up until that point, the boys had kind of been a hypothetical concept. At that point, they ­became real. They were actual humans. There was a real chance that we were going to meet them, and then they would probably all die.

“I felt that real sense of pressure when my head was just about to come above the water and see them the first time.

“But once I met them, I felt ­really good. I was reassured by their confidence.”