Meet the Harrogate man who lost his leg but became an ultra-swimmer

Jonty Warneken has set himself the task of raising £30,000 as he prepares to mark two landmark dates which not only had a monumental impact on his youth, but which are still the cause of so much pain today.

A keen rugby player with a bright future in the armed forces, Jonty’s world came crashing down around him when, at the age of 22, he lost control of his beloved MGB Roadster while driving through Bedlam Bank near Ripley and slammed it into a tree. His injuries were so severe that despite spending six months in hospital, where surgeons battled to re-build his battered face and attempted to save his shattered legs, he is still facing up to the prospect of yet more surgery in the coming months.

But before he goes under the knife for what would be a 12th operation, Jonty is determined to face the twin anniversaries, of first the crash and secondly the day he lost his leg, with a feisty defiance. But Jonty is not the sort of person to look back and think on what might have been. His focus has always been on the future and fighting back from an incident which happened in a flash three decades ago, but which he accepts will live with him for the rest of his life.

The funds will be split between three separate causes close to Jonty’s heart with the £30,000 going to Open Country, Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust and Candlelighters.

A promising career in the Army and the prospect of playing professional rugby union with colleagues who would eventually go on to represent their country may have passed him by, but new doors have opened as a result.

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As a trustee of the Open Country charity, which provides disabled and amputee members with the opportunity of enjoying outdoor activities, he has already raised thousands of pounds with a series of hardcore, thrill-seeking, escapades.

Jonty is a renowned open water, channel, and ice swimmer, having completed multiple endurance swims, including English and North Channel Relays. He was the first para swimmer in the world to solo swim the North Channel from Northern Ireland to Scotland, and has numerous marathon distance swims.

He was a part of the ‘Team Bits Missing’ which was the first disabled relay team to swim the North Channel and he was the first disabled swimmer to swim the International Ice Swimming Association’s ‘Ice Mile’ – a one-mile swim in water of 5C or less temperature, in just a standard swimming costume.

A three-times Guinness World Record holder for Para Distance and Ice Swimming, he has represented Great Britain in two Ice Swimming World Championships and has recently returned from the first European Ice Swimming championships in Romania where he won two Para silver medals and a bronze.

“I don’t really perceive myself as having a disability per se, I see myself as an amputee and with that comes certain considerations and limitations,” he states. “My extremely damaged right ankle is more a limitation on what I can do, not my prosthetic leg.

“Most people will go through some kind of trauma in their lives, but I believe we can all achieve things with a bit of application, commitment and probably some sacrifice and suffering – even things that most of the population couldn’t even comprehend attempting.

“I tell people to ‘surround themselves with ordinary people who do extraordinary things’ as that will soon become your norm. So, for me now, channel and ice swimming is my norm and I am just an ordinary chap from Harrogate.”

He will be swimming around Jersey in July, then there is the Bristol Channel relay with ‘Team Bits Missing’ at the end of August before he attempts the Bristol Channel solo at the end of September. Next year, he has the Swimming World Championships in Molveno, Italy, and he wants to go back to the Arctic to race over 100 miles on skis in the Arctic Ultra. If he can stay uninjured, there is an English Channel Solo booked for May.

Jonty, who heads up the Harrogate office of wealth and finance management experts Atomos, admits that in the immediate aftermath of that fateful day on November 29, 1994, he lay in hospital with little or no idea of what he was going to be able to do with the rest of his life. “I was driving home to the Burnt Yates area from an interview in Harrogate and to cut a long story short, I lost the back end of my car on some mud at the bottom of Bedlam Bank on the road from Ripley and hit a tree at about 50mph,” he explains. “It was a beautiful 1963 MGB roadster and I was absolutely gutted that I trashed it… let alone the actual damage that I did to myself.

“I was in hospital for six months. My skull and nose had to be rebuilt, my right ankle was rebuilt, while my knee and other parts of me had to be stitched back together.

“They tried to save both of my legs, but they were badly damaged and infected. In the end it was so painful that it took me just five seconds to decide to have one amputated. I did ask if they could keep part of my toe as a souvenir, but it just crumbled as soon as they removed the leg, it was that rotten.

“This year will be the 30th anniversary of the crash and I want to mark that in a way that shows how far I have come, both physically and mentally. I want something positive to come out of it.”

You can support Jonty’s efforts by visiting: www.givewheel.com/fundraising/4037/jonty-nolimbit-swims/