Spencer Matthews clambers onto the top bunk to get closer to the satellite router he has rigged up in a window at Bellingshausen Station, a research base on King George Island in Antarctica. Behind him is a dormitory full of bunk beds. He turns his phone camera to show the bleak, polar tundra in which he has just completed the last of seven Ironman-length triathlons, one on each of the seven continents, in 21 days.
Although Matthews, 37, would see off most contenders if talking were an endurance event, he is not displaying the sort of elation one would expect of someone who has just claimed two world records. “I am elated. I just don’t have much energy. I haven’t been awake very long,” he says.
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After finishing this final triathlon he confirmed with Guinness World Records that his 21 days, 9 hours and 18 minutes was the fastest time for completing a 140.6-mile triathlon on seven continents and that his time in Antarctica (28 hours, 51 minutes and 11 seconds) was the fastest for such a triathlon on the coldest, driest continent (there have only been two others completed). He then shovelled down some food and slept for 16 hours.
“I haven’t showered. I’ve slept in a hoodie,” he says. “When we get to Punta Arenas [in Chile] I’ll have a lovely cold shower, get really clean, put some fresh clothes on.”
Matthews used a extra thick wetsuit used by polar divers
MATTHEW STONE
Two things become clear during our conversation. First Matthews’s experience in Antarctica was more frightening and humbling than he had been expecting. And second he is keen for me to know that the bearded, weather-beaten, slightly haggard Spencer Matthews staring out at me is not quite the man I have previously met in the flesh.
It is, of course, a cliché to ask runners what they are running from but Matthews volunteers that part of the reason he is in Antarctica is to get away from the person he calls “former Spencer”. That Spencer came to our attention when he was the boastful lothario on the “structured reality” TV series Made in Chelsea and went on to make a career sharing every detail of his life in ways that some found endlessly entertaining and others brain-shrinkingly banal.
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Before we come on to the shame he feels about his younger, prodigiously promiscuous, hard-drinking self, he explains why he is looking quite so stunned after his encounter with Antarctica. His Project Se7en challenge began with a full-distance triathlon in London, then continued with an official Ironman event in Arizona and triathlons of the same length in Cape Town, Perth (Australia), Dubai and Rio. After that he headed to Antarctica, where a mostly Chilean team had made arrangements for him at the Russian station.
The 2.4-mile swim in open water in a bay where the sea temperature was 0C was the bit he had been most worried about for months. “Going hypothermic essentially could bring an end to the challenge,” he says. In Cape Town, where the water was warmer but reportedly contained rabid seals, he got so cold that he had an out-of-body experience and wondered if he was having a heart attack. He needed 90 minutes in a hot shower to warm up. “It was probably the closest that the challenge came to ending,” he says.
In Antarctica he opted for an extra thick wetsuit used by polar divers but didn’t have a chance to practise in it. “I’d been genuinely pretty fearful and I was overwhelmed by the swim safety briefing the night before. They had appointed seven spotters and two boats, a Russian boat and a Chilean boat, flanking me quite closely and I said, ‘What’s with the level of security?’ And the guy just said, ‘If something gets hold of you, we need to be near you.’ I said, ‘What do you mean, if something gets hold of me?’ They said, ‘Leopard seals grab from the side and then they drag you as deep as possible as fast as possible.’ I thought, ‘That sounds very unwelcoming.’”
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Matthews was being filmed for a documentary. Footage of him being mistaken for a penguin by a hungry 600kg leopard seal would have made for one of the most sensational chapters in reality television. Fortunately, although he was an easy target — “a large, wounded penguin given the way I was swimming” — he escaped even a nibble (I must confess I did rush to look up leopard seal teeth and their canines are huge). Some in his WhatsApp groups also seem to have enjoyed focusing on this part of the story and he has been dubbed “the Spenguin”.
Real penguins crossed his path, causing alarm because he couldn’t see what they were. “I was exhausted coming out of the water, could barely walk. I vomited profusely because I swallowed so much seawater.”
Penguins crossed his path as he swam 2.4 miles
MATTHEW STONE
His flight to the base had been delayed and the runway was no longer clear for him to use for his 112-mile cycle, so he had to slog up and down a 200m icy and pitted road for nearly 19 hours. “Mental torture — you’re not getting anywhere,” he says. The temperature on land was minus 1 to 2C but with the wind chill it felt more like minus 18. He ran the marathon in loops around the Chilean air base.
“Three weeks of extraordinary highs and lows” is his verdict on the whole project. “The lows were partly what I was after.”
Last year Matthews ran 30 marathons in 30 days in Jordan, setting the world record for the most marathons run in a month on sand. He preferred the “unpredictability” of the ultramarathons. “This is what living is all about to me,” he says. “I love this. When I’m 80 years old, I hope to be able to tell my grandkids all about it.”
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Matthews’s reinvention of himself as an endurance athlete is part of an attempt to put behind him a misspent youth in which, he once claimed, he slept with 1,000 women. When I met him last year he was planning his desert marathons and was embarrassed when I read him extracts from his 2013 autobiography about an orgy and a contest to sleep with the most women. Nevertheless we touched on the content of his podcast with his wife, Vogue Williams, the model and presenter, which included such intimate revelations as her complaints that she didn’t like looking at his hair during sex.
In the Jordanian desert he had an epiphany. (That’s my word, not his. Last year, when he took part in the BBC’s programme Pilgrimage, he expressed surprise that Jesus Christ was a real person.) “I had a moment in that desert where I realised I don’t much want to entertain. I’ve been a talentless entertainer. I had a big ‘who am I?’ moment. Why am I doing these shows? Do I want to be doing them when I’m 50?”
At the start of this year he stopped doing the podcast with Williams (who has another successful podcast with her sister, Amber) to focus on his endurance feats, a fitness podcast, Untapped, and his alcohol-free spirits company. But he and Williams have been talking about working together again.
“I feel extraordinarily lucky to be married to that woman. We’re a very, very happy couple,” he says. She has just been in the I’m a Celebrity … jungle. He could not be in Australia to greet her when she left because he was on his long-planned triathlon epic. “Not talking to Vogue for that period of time was horrendous,” he says. Their three children were looked after by a rotation of both sets of grandparents while they were away.
Matthews has seen that bit of jungle already, though it was a briefer than expected visit when he was found to have been taking a steroid-based medication and left the 2015 series. “That’s former Spencer we’re talking about,” he says quickly.
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His wife had been confident that he would achieve the triathlon feat. His parents were more worried. David, who made a fortune in car dealerships and property, and Jane Matthews own Eden Rock, a hotel on St Barts. In 1999 Michael, 23, the second of their three boys, became the youngest Briton to reach the summit of Everest but disappeared on the way down. Spencer was ten years old.
As a teenager, he would run wild during holidays from Eton in St Barts. His oldest brother, James, a wealthy investment manager who is married to Pippa Middleton, sister of the Princess of Wales, took part in numerous endurance events to raise money for a charitable foundation in Michael’s name.
“I was a very heavy drinker in my late teens and early twenties and throughout that time I would admire my brother but almost pretend that I didn’t because it made me feel better about myself,” Matthews says. “I would pretend that I thought it was weird — why is he doing all that stuff? I wholeheartedly understand it now.”
Matthews rode for 112 miles on icy and pitted roads
MATTHEW STONE
Of his triathlons he says: “I like to think that this puts distance between me and my former self. I’m not even familiar with who my former self is. That feeling of shedding a bit of the shame that I carried for so many years and replacing that with pride has been an enlightening and wonderful time in my life.”
In 2023 he made Finding Michael, a documentary in which he went to Everest on his brother’s trail. “I think Michael would be really proud of me, as my family are. Michael has always been my main source of inspiration. I wish that we had got to know each other as adults. Sometimes during this Antarctic challenge, to try and take my mind off the pain, I was wondering what Michael’s wife would have been like and what his kids would have been like. I think about him whenever I feel depleted and tired because there’s something to link to his final moments. One thing that gets me through very difficult times, when you can’t quite believe how much more you have to go, is thinking about Michael and how he died alone on Everest. It makes me sad but it also makes me angry and it helps me.”
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Project Se7en has been raising money for James’ Place, the charity that helps suicidal young men. “Although I’ve never been suicidal, I can understand some of the feelings and symptoms. I had big problems with alcohol and that makes you feel quite lonely, shameful, inadequate.”
Social media can be problematic for vulnerable men, he believes. “I don’t think it helps [having] a lot of toxic voices online pushing false ideals of what masculinity should be. I would like to set a good example to young men and show a bit of vulnerability in pain. These voices on social media — the Andrew Tates — would make a young man feel weak if they did speak to anyone. This hammering of [the message that] you have to be strong, you have to not care, you have to earn this or you’re useless: I fear for my sons, who will obviously end up on social media at some point and [find] these juvenile, misogynistic views circling.”
Whatever you think of Matthews, who had never done a triathlon before this challenge, he certainly seems to have developed serious physical and mental stamina with his record attempts. “It’s the stuff that builds you,” he says. “I want my kids to grow up thinking that difficult things are possible.”
Is he hooked on the buzz of extreme sports? “I certainly hope so. There’s worse things to be addicted to. I enjoy it when people say, ‘You’ve just swapped one addiction for another.’ Yes! That’s positive, as far as I’m concerned. I love this. It makes me feel alive.”
More record attempts could be incoming but he may be more discerning. “I’ll try and eliminate the dangerous elements that I have little control over. I’m not sure I’ll find myself in Antarctic water again. It just felt verging on foolish.”