Helene Diamantides

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Helene Diamantides is a highly respected fell runner; whose accomplishments merit her inclusion in the category of the greatest ever in the sport's history.

[edit] Early Life

Helene Diamantides was born in North Yorkshire, but she spent most of her childhood outside of England. She lived in Ghana and later in Greece where as a teenager she competed internationally in the pentathlon and her running ability was encouraged and developed. At the age of sixteen, she completed her first marathon. In 1982 Diamantides moved to Durham (England) to study for a degree in education. It was through the University of Durham's running club that she first began fell running. Over the next five years she competed in various fell races, including the Karrimor Mountain Marathon.

[edit] Fell Running Achievements

In 1987 Diamantides completed her first Bob Graham Round (BG); which is to run 72 miles over 42 Lake District peaks in under twenty-four hours. Later in the same year she and fellow fell-runner Alison Wright (who is the youngest woman to complete the BG) went to Nepal to attempt to break the Crane brother's record for running from Everest Base Camp to Kathmandu. This is a 167 mile route which includes 32,000 feet of descent and 46,000 feet of descent. Both women completed the route in 3 days, 10 hrs and 8 mins: twenty-four hours faster than the record and twelve hours faster than a team of Sherpas who were also attempting to set a new record.

In 1988 Diamantides competed internationally in a number of mountain races. She won both the women's events in the Mount Cameroon race and the Mount Kinabalu race; and she came third in the 100 mile Hogger 'Super Marathon' in Algeria. In the same year she also set a new women's record for the BG: 20 hrs, 17 mins.

The next year Diamantides decided to attempt a feat of running no one had tried before. Her ambition was to complete in one summer all three of the classic British twenty-four hour rounds: the English BG, the Welsh Paddy Buckley Round, and the Scottish Ramsey Round. The first was the Paddy Buckley which was completed in 20hrs, 8 mins; beating the men's record (held by Adrian Belton) by two hours. One month later Diamentides ran the Ramsey. She was then only the sixth person to successfully complete it and did so with a time of 20 hrs, 24 mins. By coincidence Adrian Belton had also decided to attempt all three rounds that summer. In a spirit of camaraderie typical of fell running, Diamantides and Belton ran the final BG leg together. It took them 19 hrs, 11 mins; which meant not only had Diamantides completed all three rounds in seventy-two days, but that she had also broken her own BG record by just over an hour.

Diamantides greastest feat came in 1992. The 'Dragon's Back' was a new 220 mile five-day race the length of Wales, taking in the some of the most challenging mountainous terrain the country has to offer. It was supposed to become an annual race, but because of its severity (the Swedish ultra runner Rune Larsson, who had once run 162 miles in twenty-four hours abandoned any any ambition to win the race by the end of the first day), it only occurred once. Diamantides entered the race with Martin Stone; she and Stone won the race in 38 hrs, 38, mins. The extent of Diamantides achievement can be seen by the fact that the strong all-male pairing of Mark McDermott and Adrian Belton came second with a time of 39 hrs, 10 mins (McDermott is one the greatest fell runners of recent years, having the distinction of running seventy-six Lake District peaks in twenty-four hours).