Gareth Mitchelson was at Cowal to try and complete a possible world record 50-step Highland Fling to raise cash for charity Action Duchenne, which is fighting for a cure for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.
Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is a genetic progressive muscle wasting disease almost exclusively affecting young boys, and which is as yet without a cure.
We talked to Gareth after he had completed his amazing dance in Cowal’s ceildh tent, and asked him how he got involved in the record attempt.
“Last November my son Logan was diagnosed with Duchenne, and I thought I need to get the word out, I need to do something, I can’t sit about and not do anything,” he said. “Public awareness was a big issue and I thought well, the only thing I can do is dance.
“In April I did a 40-step fling, there was a lot of feedback, a lot of positive news and dancers worldwide are now doing their own fundraising campaigns for this, so from that point it’s a huge success.
“Cowal got in touch, because we’re here every year helping; I’ve been here since I was eight, a long time back, I won the World Championships in the 1980s,” he added.
“Cowal said: ‘Look Gareth, we need to do something for you and for Logan, how about you do your fling again?’ I thought why do another 40, why not push it? I thought 50 sounds good, regretted it almost instantly that I’d suggested it, but there we go, we’ve come up and we’ve done the 50.”
For non-dancers, we got an explanation of how daunting the feat was even for a four-time World Highland Dancing Champion (Gareth won in 1985, 1987, 1988 and 1989).
“A normal Highland Dancer in a fling would do four steps, so for 50 you’re looking at 12 times that length,” Gareth explained. “It’s possibly something similar to taking a mile runner and telling him that you’re away to do a marathon, you’ve got four weeks to train and we need you to run it at mile speeds.
“The other thing is that it’s a lot of mental preparation. As well as building up my own stamina I was researching to find 50 traditional Highland Fling steps so that I can dance 50 unique steps and bring them back, so there’s an awful lot of mental work going on as I was jigging along there. The third thing that I have is speed. Dancing the Fling at around 150 beats per minute, today’s dancers dance about 110 or 114, so I’m dancing 50% faster.”
• For more information visit Fling for Logan and Action Duchenne
