{"id":1972,"date":"2013-01-24T08:58:12","date_gmt":"2013-01-24T08:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forcespenpals.net\/p=?1972"},"modified":"2013-01-24T08:58:12","modified_gmt":"2013-01-24T08:58:12","slug":"former-british-soldiers-complete-dakar-rally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forcespenpals.net\/gb\/news\/former-british-soldiers-complete-dakar-rally\/","title":{"rendered":"Former British soldiers complete Dakar Rally"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Major Matt O'Hare and Corporal Philip Gillespie made history on Saturday (January 19th) by becoming the first ever disability team to complete the gruelling Dakar Rally.<\/p>\n<p>The Race2Recovery team was made up of four Wildcat race vehicles and started the contest in Lima, Peru, on January 5th. Since then, the ex-servicemen have competed for over 15 days and covered 9,000 km of some of the toughest terrain in the world.<\/p>\n<p>Major O'Hare and Corporal&nbsp;Gillespie's Wildcat was the only Race2Recovery car to make it over the finish line, with their teammates dropping out along the way.<\/p>\n<p>Corporal&nbsp;Gillespie was quick to praise his teammates &ndash; including the mechanics and support team who helped them complete the race &ndash; and went on to say he hoped they had been able to inspire people facing difficult situations.<\/p>\n<p>The team also received royal approval with Prince William, who had been following their progress, saying: &quot;What you have achieved was a triumph of perseverance and teamwork and you have shown the world what true valour looks like.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Race2Recovery entered the Dakar Rally to raise money for Tedworth House Personnel Recovery Centre, Help For Heroes' flagship recovery centre.<\/p>\n<p>Posted by Mark Wilkins<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"ADNFCR-2867-ID-801527671-ADNFCR\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.directnews.co.uk\/feedtrack\/justcopyright.gif?feedid=2867&amp;itemid=801527671\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Race2Recovery has become the first ever disability team to finish the challenging competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Former British soldiers complete Dakar Rally - Forces Penpals GB<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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