Good morning.
Who among us has not, slumped on the sofa in our pyjamas, passively watched a contestant blow it on The Chase and thought: I could do better than this.
Mariane Léveillé certainly did. In 2000, the French-Canadian applied to be on a quizshow, smashed her audition and soon discovered “it was so exciting to be on set, answering quickfire questions. I didn’t care about being on TV … It was just such an adrenaline rush to hit that buzzer and get the answers right.”
Chasing that high, Léveillé explains in this week’s Guardian Experience column, is how she went on to appear on another 25 different gameshows, banking C$52,000 (£30,000).
Scroll on for more tales of determination and other good news stories from our First Edition newsletter.
The Guardian newsletters team
I did my first Ironman at 61 – after my husband bet I couldn’t beat him
Carmen Francesch was 61 when she embarked on her first Ironman challenge in 2022, travelling from her home in Surrey to Barcelona where she swam 2.4 miles before cycling a further 112 miles – followed by a marathon. Although she swore “never again”, a year later she was competing in the Ironman world championship in Hawaii.
Now 63, Francesch says that Ironman competitions are central to her life. “You need a goal to work towards, and this is mine,” she says. “I only have one day off a week, otherwise I’m always out cycling, running and swimming. It’s amazing to know my body can move like this at my age and I want to show other women that they can do it too.”
How a monk and a Hippo joined forces to tackle Bangkok’s plastic pollution
Stretching more than 230 miles, the Chao Phraya River is the largest waterway flowing through central Thailand. Home to tigerfish, catfish and more, the river is also the source of 4,000 tonnes of plastic waste entering the Gulf of Thailand every year.
Phra Mahapranom Dhammalangkaro, the abbot of the Wat Chak Daeng temple which overlooks the river, had already sought to fight back against this pollution by building a recycling centre in his temple’s grounds. Now, with the addition of the solar-powered Hippo boat, created in conjunction with the Seven Clean Seas organisation, they will aim to drastically reduce this pollution – turning collected plastics into fabric for monk’s robes, bags and blankets, as well as oil and fertiliser.
“People can make [Buddhist] merits by giving us plastic bottles, bags and paper,” says Dhammalangkaro of the scheme that aims to remove 1.4m kilos of plastic waste from the river each year.
Liverpool library torched by far-right rioters raises repair funds
Since its opening last year, the Spellow Lane Hub had become more than simply a library, hosting local events and a food bank for its Liverpool community.
Having been targeted by rioters on Saturday night, however, the once vibrant centre now stands as a burned shell – though not, thanks to astonishing fundraising efforts, for long.
Having been set up with a small target of £500, a GoFundMe drive to help rebuild the Spellow now stands close to £225,000 in donations, with money continuing to pour in from thousands of generous contributors the world over, in a bid to aid its recovery.
The unsung hero of the Olympic-champion US women’s gymnastics team is a very good boy
Team USA’s women’s gymnastics quintet are returning home from Paris with eight Olympic medals to their name, but there’s one hero of their team that you won’t have seen on the podium.
Beacon, pictured above with Simone Biles, is a four-year-old golden retriever emotional support dog who has been a valuable behind-the-scenes member of the squad for the past year, helping the competitors keep their stress and serotonin levels in check.
“Thank god for Beacon,” said Sunisa Lee, who took bronze in both the women’s uneven bars and the women’s artistic individual all-around events, when posing with Beacon during qualifying ahead of the Paris spectacular.
‘This is also about love!’: the Ukrainian disability campaigner on the brink of reality TV stardom
Oleksandr Budko was able to cope with the trauma of losing both legs in Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region, saying that during recovery he tried to find meaning in life. “Then, somehow, my brain looked for the positive everywhere,” he says.
But the challenges he and others face trying to navigate the world independently with a disability have made him truly angry. To cope, Budko has become a prominent disability rights activist in his country with a YouTube series that sees him take Ukrainian celebrities on tours to focus on a need for greater accessibility. And now the former barista, who competed in the Invictus Games, is taking his activism to another high-profile platform: he will star in the forthcoming season of Ukraine’s version of the reality show The Bachelor.
“There is a lack of understanding of disabled people in Ukraine, but there are more and more people with disabilities every day [because of the war],” he told reporter Liz Cookman in Kyiv. “If we can change societal attitudes, then it will be easier to push for more structural changes.”
