![]() ![]() It doesn't matter how brave or confident you might be before sticking your head, that’s just impossible. RS: One was our huge experience in caves and of course knowing that no matter how keen the boys might have wanted to dive out without being sedated, no one was going to hold their s- together for two and a half hours in those conditions. JB: Why was it that all these special forces groups from around the world could not come up with the plan that worked, and a couple of middle-aged cavers from the UK could? There's no professional rescue service, certainly not in Britain…you need folks with cave rescue and diving experience. RS: No one else is going to get a caver apart from another caver. JB: Even before you were called to Thailand to help rescue the boys, you’d made several rescues of trapped cavers, as well as numerous gruesome recoveries-even having to retrieve the body of one of your best friends. It's like wingsuit flying, but in ultra-slow motion. If you see a hole in the ceiling, you can fly up to it. You are going through in three dimensions. RS: And how fantastic is that? Do you ever dream about flying? Well, if you are cave diving it's like that, you know. JB: In The Rescue, one of the team says it’s like floating in space. RS: You're aware of the concept of flow, the state of mind when you're totally in the moment? I think when you are cave diving, you are in a bit of sensory deprivation because your vision is limited and all you hear is bubbles, which is sort of like white noise, and there's not much else, really. JB: For a lot of people exploring a flooded cave in the dark sounds like an absolute nightmare. Forty-two years after going to university, six or seven of us were all together on the actual weekend the boys went in the cave. Because of the nature of caving, you've got to rely on others. I found my tribe, and some of them are really, really, really good friends. JB: It seems like once you joined the caving club in college, you found your tribe. It combined all the elements in one package that really, really resonated with me. But this seemed much more adventurous- underground and then underwater. What about that film ignited your passion for this sport? It followed three young explorers as they completed a world-record cave dive in Yorkshire. JB: Your first introduction to caving was in 1979, when you watched a documentary called The Underground Eiger. Even my birth sign is a Pisces, if you believe in that stuff. That's what you wear when you’re fishing, that's what you wear in the fire service, and that's what British cavers wear. ![]() I grew up in the sixties and early seventies when all those Jacques Cousteau programs were on the telly. Rick Stanton: I was always fascinated by water. Bourne Jr: Something about moving water seems to have appealed to you from an early age. He spoke to National Geographic about his love of caving, the bold plan to save the boys, and how his life has been altered by this extraordinary rescue. He’s now written a hair-raising autobiography called Aquanaut: The Inside Story of the Thai Cave Rescue. (He’s also portrayed by Viggo Mortensen in an upcoming Ron Howard feature film.) Stanton, a 60-year-old retired British firefighter, was a central character in the National Geographic documentary, The Rescue, streaming on Disney+ and directed by the team behind the Oscar-winning climbing documentary Free Solo. ![]()
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