Row, row, row the world (From This is Hampshire)

Row, row, row the world

9:20am Tuesday 2nd March 2010 in News By Lucie Richards

Dave Holby rowing at Fit for Business at The Ark Conference Centre. He is "rowing" around the world, raising money for Breakthrough Breast Cancer

DAVE Holby has rowed 26,600km – two-thirds around the world – without ever leaving Basingstoke town centre, and in the process, he has raised £12,000 for a cancer charity.

Dave has been a regular feature at The Malls shopping centre since May 2008 when he started his round-the-world row on a static rowing machine to raise money for Breakthrough Breast Cancer.

After a year and nine months, the 29-year-old actor, of Rainham Close, Kempshott, Basingstoke, has less than 13,500km left to row and is – hypothetically speaking – in Brazil.

Dave, who studied drama at Exeter University, said: “I’m hoping I should be all done just before Christmas this year.

“The support in town has just been so fantastic – I don’t think I would have made it through the recent snowy weather without it!”

Alongside fundraising for his £55,000 target for the cancer charity – which works towards the prevention, treatment and eradication of breast cancer – Dave has achieved four endurance rowing world records.

He will be embarking on a fifth – the longest-ever tandem row – on St George’s Day with his friend Ollie Trinder, a Reading-based fitness instructor who is doing his own virtual rowing challenge from Canada to Miami to raise money for Cancer Research UK.

Dave said: “It will be Ollie and I rowing alternate two-hour shifts on one machine. Seventy-two hours is the record and we’re going to try and extend it to 100 hours if we possibly can. We’ll start rowing on St George’s Day, April 23, at 10am and should finish by 2pm on Tuesday, April 27, hopefully with buttocks intact!”

Dave’s other records so far are the fastest 100km tandem British record in the heavyweight 20-29 age category, in May 2009, the furthest 24-hour tandem world record row in the heavyweight 20-29 age category – when he co-rowed almost 200 miles – in July 2009, the lightweight world record for the fastest million metre row in October 2009, and the lightweight world record for endurance rowing of 30 hours, last November.

Dave also recently attended a Fit for Business event at The Ark conference centre at Basingstoke hospital in a bid to drum up corporate support, and the event resulted in £170 of donations.

He said: “I’m now up to £12,000 which is great but I’m hoping I can really push on to raise as much as possible.”

Anyone wishing to donate, or find out about Dave’s fundraising mission, can visit davetherower.co.uk/acatalog/Donate_Now.