Plymstock’s Mark Ormrod has been named ITV Fundraiser of the Year in the 2021 Pride of Britain Awards screened on ITV on November 4.
Ex-Royal Marine Mark was on patrol in Helmand Province on Christmas Eve in 2007 when he was blown up by a Taliban improvised explosive device.
He lost an arm and both legs below the knee in the blast and was twice pronounced dead at the scene. Doctors originally told him that he would never walk again but Mark defied this prediction and just five months later he marched onto the parade ground on prosthetics to collect his tour of duty medal.
Since then he’s gone on to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds for charity by carrying out remarkable feats of endurance.
He has run 3,500 miles across the USA to raise awareness of wounded veterans, cycled 3,000 miles around the UK, and as if that wasn’t enough he also won 11 medals, including five gold, at the Invictus Games.
This year he decided to raise money for the veterans’ charity REORG.
What started out as a comparatively simple plan to raise £1,000 through a beard shave morphed into a challenge that has already raised almost half a million pounds. Mark, who is 38, has completed a 5km run, a 1km swim across Plymouth Sound, and a 99.9 mile bike ride.
Mark said:
“I never wanted to be a burden on anyone either my family or the taxpayer and I used that as my motivation to regain my independence and push myself as hard as I could so my wife and children would be proud of me.”
(Story courtesy of the Plympton Podcast)
