Tough Fatima Whitbread gritted her teeth and soldiered on in hardcore reality show Celebrity SAS after secretly breaking three ribs.
The 61-year-old Olympian sustained her injuries while jumping out of a helicopter for a challenge in which TOWIE’s Pete Wicks, 33, withdrew from the show after knocking himself unconscious and cracking his ribs.
But Fatima – the oldest contestant ever – continued without highlighting her own “unbearable” suffering.
She reveals: “When we jumped out the helicopter, Pete Wicks hurt his ribs, didn’t he? I cracked three ribs too, but I decided to go on.
“I never talked about it in the process because I didn’t want to be pulled out.”
But despite battling through the challenges, Fatima was in agony. “It was awful,” she says. “I can’t tell you the unbearable pain I was going through.
“Even picking up my backpack was really hard. I knew I was being a pain to some of them asking them to help me on with my backpack where normally I’d just yank it up with one arm.
“But I couldn’t even do that thanks to three cracked ribs. As the days went by, the pain got worse. I couldn’t lay down properly or sit up properly.
“And it was just… moving about trying to get dressed, awful. Absolutely awful.”
Javelin legend Fatima even kept her injuries secret when dancer AJ Pritchard knelt on her chest during the Murderball challenge, which aired tonight.
She says: “I never considered quitting. I didn’t want to. I wanted to go through the whole process.
“It was one night we were laying down and Jade said to me, ‘you all right?’ I said, ‘I can’t lay down and I can’t get up, it’s so painful’.
“It was gripping me. Little did I know I had three cracked ribs, but I didn’t want to go to the doctor and I didn’t want to make a fuss because they might have said, ‘you can’t go back in.’
“So that wasn’t an option because I was there to do a job and I wanted to see the process through.”
The DS [directing staff] removed Fatima in last night’s episode, telling her that she had proved herself more than the rest of the contestants already and calling her a “flying pension book” as she sailed past the younger recruits in one challenge.
She had been told to “stand down” in the final round of Murderball where recruits engage in hand-to-hand combat in the desert.
Soap star Jennifer Ellison was also asked to give her armband back after complaining about being punched in the ribs by boxer Shannon Courtenay during the challenge.
Jennifier, 39, insisted: “I would never, ever quit, ever – I’d literally be dragging one leg around. It got to the point where the tasks were so hard and so physical that I was really struggling.”
But she said of the series: “It has given me a new lease of life.”
Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins is on Channel 4 on Sundays at 9pm.
