Interview with Nikki Sanderson – Recruit #8
Category: InterviewWhy did you decided to go on Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins?
God knows! The challenge. I love challenging myself and seeing how far I can push myself. In the past I cycled from Vietnam to Cambodia and whenever I've been asked to do something that's a physical challenge, I want to do it because I want to try and see how far I can push my body. I also just wanted to go because I'm someone who really respects our forces. I've got family that were in the forces and to be able to have an experience like that and to be trained by the people that we were trained by, it's just a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I'd have been silly to pass up on. To be able to experience, as a civilian, even a tiny bit of what our forces go through in training, you just don't get those opportunities in life. So, to me, it was just a fantastic opportunity and also to be able to see how far I could go and see what I could achieve.
What were you most nervous about before you started?
Everything! I was most nervous about the unknown because you can't prepare yourself for something like this. You don't know what they're going to do, how they're going to do it, how you are going to be treated. You know that you're going to be sleep-deprived and there'll be a lack of food. You know these things but it still doesn't prepare you for it because knowing something and experiencing it are two completely different things, so I was just nervous about what was going to happen.
A big element of this show is Ant Middleton and the DS. How was it being shouted at by them?
I really respect authority, and I know that they are doing their job. So when they were screaming at us using lots of colourful language, because we'd either fallen behind or weren't pulling our weight, I found that really motivational. I didn't find it threatening or nasty or anything like that.
This course tests your mental strength as well as your physical strength, so how did you feel about both aspects of that going into this course?
Physically I knew I wasn't going to be the fittest there but I knew that would be part of the challenge for me, to become fitter. But I was confident about the mental side of things, I'm not a quitter, I'm someone who always puts so much effort into anything I'm doing.
They throw you in the deep end from the word go. On the first day you had to jump off a cliff. What was that like?
I loved it! I loved the challenges, like throwing yourself down a cliff or chucking yourself out of a helicopter because I am a thrill seeker. I want to parachute, I want to jump out a plane, I want to do all these things because I love all that. I obviously struggled with the physical challenges of running up hills and all that kind of stuff. I mean, who gets to do those types of things? You just don't do those things in real life. It's just incredible. I loved it!
How did you find murder ball?
Oh that really hurt! My way of dealing with murder ball was realizing that I was not going to be able to wrestle it off one of the other guys, so I decided to get there first and jump on it. And that's what I did. I just ran, jumped, got onto it, and I held on!
Has the experience changed you in any way?
Yes, the whole thing is a life-changing experience just from the way that you think about things and the way that you feel. I just feel so grateful that I got an opportunity to do it. I already appreciate our forces, I really do, and I do support them, but coming out of that I have so much more respect for them, because we went through a small amount of what they do.