Kevin Sinfield hailed the Belfast welcome he and his team received as he completed the latest leg of a fundraising endurance challenge to help those living with Motor Neurone Disease (MND).
The third day of the former rugby league star’s bid to run seven ultra marathons in seven days in seven different regions of the UK began in icy conditions outside Ulster Rugby’s Kingspan Stadium in Belfast early on Tuesday morning.
Sinfield and his team then took in various stops across the city and its surrounds before ending at a statue of George Best at the National Football Stadium at Windsor Park.
The challenge is his first fundraising quest since his friend and former Leeds team-mate Rob Burrow died at the age of 41 in June following a much-publicised battle with MND.
By 5pm on Tuesday, the total donations for Sinfield’s Running Home for Christmas 7 in 7 in 7 challenge had passed £380,000.
The Northern Ireland leg took in St Paul’s gaelic football club in west Belfast where former Antrim player and MND campaigner Anto Finnegan played. Finnegan, who had MND, died in 2021 at the age of 48. Among those who greeted Sinfield at the club was Finnegan’s son Conall.
Sinfield also met gold medal winner Lady Mary Peters at the athletics track named in her honour on the outskirts of the city.
Later, a crowd gathered at Windsor Park to cheer Sinfield and his fellow runners as they finished the leg on Tuesday afternoon.
“Thank you for an unbelievable welcome,” he told them. “It’s been great wherever we’ve been all day.
“To see so many people on the streets when it was freezing this morning and dark. To get the send-off at Ravenhill up at Ulster from the rugby lads and the rugby club was wonderful. But just to be here, as I’ve said at every location we’ve been to, our team are really passionate about MND and fighting MND and to see so many people here who want to stand side by side with the MND communities, it’s so brilliant. I can’t thank you enough.
“MND doesn’t know locations, it’s everywhere. We’ve got to fight together. We’ve got to keep coming together, and that’s part of the reason why we’re shifting around and visiting some wonderful cities and towns and trying to see people and trying to see families with MND and trying to help.”