The Race

Introduction

This project unfolded over five years, and there’s no honest way to tell the story without taking the long route. What follows is a chronological account, broken down year by year, tracing how the project evolved, stalled, shifted, and ultimately fell apart, while quietly laying the groundwork for the company I founded in 2018, BucketRace Games.

I’ll cover everything: covering my car in advertising stickers; renting out a nightclub to premiere the post-event video; losing £500 on terrible T-shirts when I had no money; driving to Luxembourg and back in 48 hours; creating a CD of unsigned musicians for players to listen to while driving between locations, only to discover that the unsigned-musician campaign was more popular than the event itself; and facing threats of a €30,000 lawsuit from a yachting regatta.

Along the way, I’ve included photos and videos that document the process as it actually happened, not just the highlights, but the messy middle too. As ever, I've highlighted the lessons learned, the wins and the loses. Although, as you'll see sometimes I had to learn things more than once.

2003

Planting the seed

I was that guy at school who always had a camcorder in hand. Proper post-shoulder camera, nothing small or digital. The exact model was a Sony Handycam CCD-TR610E PAL Video Camcorder.

Other than playing sport, that was my thing.

I loved CKY, the precursor to Jackass. On weekends my friends and I filmed ourselves doing stupid, reckless stuff. Throwing ourselves into bushes, messing around with machinery on building sites, skateboarding, biking, even attempting jumps between buildings that, looking back, were wildly irresponsible.

Then in 2003 came Viva La Bam. A lot of my friends had lost interest by then, but I actually preferred it to the older content. It felt more structured. The ideas were planned-out missions rather than just a hodgepodge of random clips.

After watching Season 1, Episode 8, “Scavenger Hunt,” where Bam Margera sets up a chaotic overnight competition with junker cars and fifty bizarre tasks to win the family piano, I remember thinking, this is the kind of thing I want to do when I’m older lol.

2009

By this point I was at Kingston University studying Nutrition, Exercise and Health. I played for the rugby team, and our President told us all to keep a specific date free over the summer. Something was planned.

It was all shrouded in mystery. Two weeks before, we were told we’d be given a task list that involved driving around to different locations and being a bit silly.

I told Log, and he came up for the date. We agreed, whatever the most difficult task was... were doing it. On game day, the list came out, and the most difficult thing was in Amsterdam, so right away we booked our channel tunnel tickets, and left for Anne Franks house...

The first event ended up including a group of 25 University Students + Log. We grouped into 4 teams. The original task list held no prisoners and included tasks not for the faint hearted. The list consisted of tasks in Paris, Amsterdam as well as random miscellaneous tasks. The picture above was the task ‘immerse your whole team in water’.... We were meant to walk into a lake or the sea, but Team BI8s (our team name) came up with an alternative solution, the bath tub. (One of the competitors was also a ambassord for Red Bull, when they were trying to get into University campuses, when they would give student ambassord free red bull and a red bullcar! He asked us to pose with Red Bull in all the photos.