Double amputee Billy Monger on racing across the world, smashing records and transforming sport

Hawaii conjures up idyllic images. Necklaces of vibrant flowers; frozen cocktails housed in pineapples; hypnotic hula dancing set against picture-perfect sunsets. It’s the restful island paradise you’d seek for a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. Not for Billy Monger. For the former racing driver and broadcaster, Kailua-Kona was where he smashed the records for the fastest and youngest double amputee to compete in the Ironman World Championship for Comic Relief.

It’s a relentless 140.6-mile triathlon set against spiralling temperatures, open waters and desolate lava fields. It includes a 2.4-mile swim in the Pacific, a 112-mile cycle with sustained climbs in exposed terrains, ending with a marathon in severe humidity. Effectively, Billy Monger is doing Hawaii wrong.  

“Comic Relief asked if I’d be up for doing another challenge,” he told the Big Issue ahead of his challenge. His previous 140-mile effort in 2021 saw him walk, kayak and cycle across England, raising more than £3 million. “My trainer came up with a list of 12 different challenges. This one intrigued me because it was the only one where there was a world record. 

“As an athlete and a sportsman, you always want to be the best in the world. But I didn’t think this one could be a possibility. But then I thought, if my trainer thinks I can do it, it must be possible.” 

A year of hard training and sacrifices later, he made it to the start line. So, why Hawaii when there’s a perfectly good Ironman event in Leeds? Even factoring in the rolling Yorkshire hills, it’s surely a landscape with fewer hostile conditions. 

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“Kona’s not an easy Ironman, not that any of them are easy,” he laughs. “There’s every challenge you could ask for in an Ironman. Heat, humidity; people have been swept off their bikes because the wind catches them and takes it from underneath them. It’s going to be brutal.” 

Again, it feels like Billy’s missing the point of travelling to Hawaii. “Kona is where the record was set, the one we’re trying to beat,” he clarifies. “If I’m going to try and break a record, I want to break it where it was set. I don’t want any asterisk alongside my name!” 

He also points out Hawaii was the birthplace of the Ironman. Its founders combined three existing races into one gruelling event to settle the score on who are the fittest athletes. It now attracts the world’s strongest and most competitive people. 

We caught Billy’s competitive side when he starred in the celebrity edition of the Bafta-winning Race Across The World alongside his sister, Bonny, last year. It’s a show many viewers credit in changing how they travel, ditching planes for slower methods of transport. It also had the same effect on Billy. 

“When I worked in Japan this year, rather than flying from Tokyo to Suzuka, I got the bullet train,” he says. “Before the show, I wouldn’t have thought about travelling on trains and buses unless I had to. When you travel a lot, you meet different people of different cultures, and you experience new things. Now I try to make travel more worthwhile to get a taste of what these places can offer.” 

He’s got a tip for anyone stepping outside their tourist comfort zone: “I’m terrible with speaking different languages. But when I’ve been to different places, people appreciate it if you try. If you can learn a couple of things, you’re more likely to have people help you out while you’re there.” 

Monger had both his legs amputated after a near-fatal crash in 2017 aged just 17. During his time on Race Across The World, we saw some of the daily challenges he faced while travelling with his prosthetics. But he points out the conditions were unique: “It was very different to how I normally travel, I have a set routine. 

“I always take my prosthetics off to get air to my legs and let any issues heal up as best as possible. But overnight buses and trains didn’t allow me to do that as much. It made me aware if I do plan to travel like that again, these are certain things worth factoring in.” 

For his Ironman, he’s had to adapt again. The challenge saw him running further than he’s ever run before on new running blades and he used magnetic bike pedals to enable independent cycling. But while the advances in technology for disabled people competing in sports have accelerated, the same cannot always be said of travel. 

During the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, which Monger joined as part of Channel 4’s coverage, the host city’s metro was slammed over its poor access for wheelchair users and people with limited mobility. But overall, is accessibility getting any better for disabled people who want to travel? 

“My version of accessibility is very different, for example, to someone who’s in a wheelchair on a permanent basis and must rely on lifts working. I know a lot of people who are in a wheelchair on a permanent basis, and if a lift’s not working a lot of the time, their whole experience, and how accessible places are, can be completely limited. 

“A lift breaking doesn’t seem like a big thing to some people, but when you open that out to the people who need it the most, that can make a real difference.” 

With Billy Monger’s Ironman challenge, he hopes to make a difference to the world in his own way and raise as much money as possible. And then will it be time to unwind? “My family are coming out to support me and we plan to stay for a week after the event. I will be hopefully experiencing the other side of the island then.” 

Billy will finally be doing Hawaii right. He’s just taking – quite literally – the long way around. 

This interview originally appeared in the Big Issue’s Travel Special in October 2024.

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