‘We’ll Ride Together For Five Days’: Fabio Spiteri Dedicates His ‘Life’s Biggest Challenge’ To Friend Jake Vella
Maltese ultra-athlete Fabio Spiteri is currently taking on the biggest challenge in his life… and he’s dedicating it all to his friend, hero and inspirational teenage Jake Vella.
On Sunday, Spiteri kicked off the Deca 10x in Italy. Finished by less than 100 people from all around the world, the behemoth challenge consists of a 38-kilometre swim, a 422-kilometre run and a 1,800-kilometre bike ride. And it’s this last insane hurdle which will see the boy hero being with Spiteri throughout the whole five-day ride.
“We’ll ride together for five days my friend,” Spiteri wrote two days after sticking a photo of Jake on his bike. “Jake will be next to you the whole time,” the boy’s father, Josie, emotionally told the ultra-athlete.
“Jake, I don’t have enough words to describe how big you were as a person,” Fabio wrote in an open letter ahead of his challenge.
“We will miss you a lot and you didn’t deserve this,” he continued in his tribute. “I will keep you in my heart like many people will. We need to use the positivity you had during the tough times in our daily life. Jake, on Sunday I have the biggest race of my life. I know you are in heaven supporting me and see me complete the race. I am not 100 per cent focused but I will give everything I have to cross the finish line and dedicate it to you.”
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Yesterday, Fabio completed the 38-kilometre swim in under 16 hours, finishing fourth of the pool. “Will take one hour rest and start the bike,” he said, kicking off the next gigantic step of his challenge, the days-long bike ride. As of 23 hours ago, he had already completed 300 kilometres, with an update shared in the very early hours of this morning kicking off his third day.
In two and a half days so far, Fabio has now completed not only the 38-kilometre swim, but also 600 kilometres out of his bike ride, steadily approaching the halfway point. But even when he finishes this, he still has 422 kilometres of running left. For context, that’s the length of Malta nearly 16 times over.
Fabio is doing all of this in the hopes of raising €100,000 for animal shelters. As it stands, he’s already raised €34,000.
But beyond his monetary and physical goals, it seems like one of the biggest challenges for the inspirational athlete is to honour his own inspiration. And we’re sure that, all throughout Fabio’s gargantuan task, Jake will be watching over and cheering him on with the rest of us.
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