{"id":386132,"date":"2026-04-11T03:47:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T03:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/386132\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T03:47:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T03:47:09","slug":"ex-wales-flanker-richard-parks-on-dark-thoughts-and-going-pole-to-pole-with-will-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/386132\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Wales flanker Richard Parks on \u2018dark thoughts\u2019 and going Pole to Pole with Will Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

Told by a surgeon at the age of 31 that chronic damage to his right shoulder meant he would never play rugby again, former Wales international Richard Parks \u201cfell off the edge of a cliff\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like I was in free fall without anything to grab onto,\u201d the ex-Newport and Pontypridd flanker told the South China Morning Post, adding that his self-worth spiralled as his identity slipped away.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I wasn\u2019t Richard Parks the rugby player, who was I?\u201d he said. \u201cI always enjoyed being good at something; a big part of that was my physicality, so when my body broke I felt like the human being was broken.\u201d<\/p>\n

At his lowest ebb, Parks decided that he needed to earn his place on Earth by \u201csurviving something\u201d, an attitude he readily acknowledges was \u201creally dark\u201d.<\/p>\n

Still, the 48-year-old believes that stark conclusion led him to become a world-leading endurance athlete and polar explorer, and the recent television sidekick of Hollywood superstar Will Smith.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of these emotions, even now, are quite difficult to articulate,\u201d Parks said. \u201cWhy did I choose mountains? It was the scariest thing I could think of and I needed that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RichardRichard Parks has spent the past decade reinventing himself. Photo: Nat Geo TV<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Told by a surgeon at the age of 31 that chronic damage to his right shoulder meant he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[14352,103969,184053,146,106923,85,46,184054,6889,125164,125163,184055,5959,39042,9523,71349],"class_list":{"0":"post-386132","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-antarctica","9":"tag-covid-pandemic","10":"tag-ellesmere-island","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-everest","13":"tag-il","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-matthew-henson","16":"tag-newport","17":"tag-north-pole","18":"tag-richard-parks","19":"tag-rougemont-school","20":"tag-south-china-morning-post","21":"tag-south-pole","22":"tag-wales","23":"tag-will-smith"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}