SAS: Who Dares Wins – Episode 4

Welcome to the SBT’s weekly report on SAS: Who Dares Wins.

Episode 4 was titled ‘Oppos’.  Our recruits were teamed up in pairs and told that from now on everything they did, they did together.  They had to rely on each other and trust each other during the exercises they were about to undertake.

A brief bit of square PT in pairs greeted our recruits with a bit of carrying and dragging and then it was on to the back of the transport  to the bridge.

In this exercise, our pairs were put into an extreme trust exercise with a free falling abseil with the second of the group acting brakeman at the bottom  of the bridge.  I have to admit, this one gave me the ebbie- geebies.  Watching the first success kind of put my mind at rest a little until we saw No:14 (James) and No:18 (Rick) go pair shaped as 14 failed to stop the rope in time and poor 18 took a nice big bounce off the rocks.  Thankfully, to everyone’s relief, 18 was no worse for the experience but  14’s street cred took a bit of a hit, after a few words from the DS everything was good.

Back at the camp, James was taken in to speak to the DS revealing another heart wrenching story of bullying.  Every time I hear these stories, my respect soars for these guys.

Next day, up into the Andes for a team TAB where we saw the first VW of the episode.  No:10 Cameron found this a struggle and fell back from the group several times.  I do have to take my hat off to him for withdrawing when he did to ensure his team mate survived.  A brilliant effort throughout though, well done.

Then to a freezing cold reservoir for a few water exercises.  The recruits jumped in using their bergans as a floatation device which caused on or two issues, that was followed by a bit of life saving drills.  We saw No:2 have all sorts of dramas with this one which was a shame as he’d been a strong contestant to this point.

Back to camp, and the DS decided to have a chat with Ant Middleton look-a-like No:6 (Mark).  Mark had been consistently strong throughout the course and wanted to probe him about his drive.  Just when I thought we had heard the gut wrenching story for this episode, Mark revealed his reasons.  For respect of Mark’s reasons, and because it is a little too close to home, I shall not dwell on the reason, only to say my heart goes out to him and a complete respect for what he is doing.  You are one strong cookie and all the luck in the world to you.

So to the cull.  Sad to say we lost No’s 2 and 22 reducing our clan down to just 9 heading into episode 5.

This was, yet again, another outstanding episode. There was drama, excitement, tears, laughs and real humanity.  I so can’t wait for next week.

Sunday 3^rd January 2019 – 9:00pm – Channel 4.  Don’t miss it.