Angus Leckonby thinks about what he is most looking forward to about the London Marathon like there is money on the line.
“The Guinness World Record,” he concludes with a surgeon’s sincerity. “And drinking a mug of beer. I love drinking beer.”
He is actually after two Guinness World Records – fastest and youngest male with an intellectual disability (II1) to complete a marathon – with more planned.
Alongside parents Matthew and Hannah, we talk in the kitchen of their east Yorkshire farmhouse, gradually morphing into a makeshift training camp. A treadmill, rowing machine and standing bike squeeze into one room. A three-metre exercise pool must go down as one of the great Facebook Marketplace purchases.
Recently 23, a birthday well-celebrated at Legoland, Leckonby is autistic and has verbal dyspraxia, alongside intellectual disabilities – limitations in cognitive functioning, including communication, social skills and self-care.
This means his speech patterns can be difficult to follow. Reading and writing are challenging, but he can remember number plates from years ago and tell you what day of the week any date fell on.
He never misses an episode of Emmerdale and loves nothing more than other people. There are few better at remembering, or caring about, birthdays or anniversaries or holidays. His pacer reckons the biggest challenge to his record attempt is his penchant for stopping for oranges and water en route, then striking up conversation with stewards.
Having first met him in 2019, he is unflinchingly kind and positive and joyous, polite and honest to a fault. Whenever his sister bought him illicit McDonald’s during busy training periods, he would invariably snitch on himself.
A competitive swimmer for the past decade after his aquatic aptitude was spotted by a PE teacher, the marathon attempt came about after swimming 400m freestyle at the 2024 National Championships.
There was the sense swimming, a lonely, obsessive sport, had taken this deeply sociable young man as far as he could go. Having long loved open water and the outdoors, triathlon was a logical next step.
A year ago he joined Yorkshire Wolds Running Club in nearby Driffield. For his parents, new people and environments can be fraught with risk, largely based in fears over other people’s reactions to Angus. Twenty years’ experience with the wider public has only encouraged the family to withdraw into themselves. All of this – from interviews with the BBC and ITV to the marathon attempt itself – presents as much as a challenge for them as for Angus. Maybe more. He just loves the attention.
“He trains with Yorkshire Wolds every Tuesday, and he’s now got a running family,” Matthew explains. “They’ve changed my view of humanity. A brilliant bunch of people.”
Angus duly informs me now that “running’s my best, favouritest in the world”. He lists everyone in the club by name, and waxes lyrical about the Christmas party. “Brain is making me tired when I’m running, but I love it because people like to be with me.”
Over 40 per cent of people with an intellectual disability exercised for less than 30 minutes per week in 2018, while 70 per cent said they wanted to be more active. Outside sport, half of British families with an intellectually disabled child live in poverty, while 94 per cent of people with an intellectual disability are unemployed.
For Leckonby, sport provides self-worth and confidence, a levelling arena and a common language. Here he is not just an equal but an aspirational, inspirational figure. He belongs. For someone with an intellectual disability, a marginalised and ignored community, this is vanishingly rare.
“Actions speak louder than words,” Matthew, 49, says. “That’s very apt with Gus. He’s got a superstrength.”
Angus and father Matthew, also his swimming coach (Photo: Special Olympics)By Sunday, Angus will have raised over £10,000 for Special Olympics GB, which provides training and competition for adults and children with intellectual disabilities, from the elite level to beginners.
Receiving no government funding, they largely rely on donations and sponsorship to function, but can currently only help around 10,000 of the 1.5m people with intellectual disabilities in the UK. Jack Grealish is an ambassador, as is Eilish McColgan, who ran with Angus in the Olympic Park in February.
Matthew largely gave up work a decade ago to become Angus’s swimming coach, an odyssey he says “has given me a purpose in life”. The pair are inseparable.
“You couldn’t ask for a better mate, a better partner in crime,” Matthew explains. “He’s non-judgemental, always supportive, very in tune with your feelings, how you are, your moods. He knows when you’re thinking about something, he’s really attuned to that.
“He’s taught me more than I’ve ever taught him, about how to coach, and how to communicate. Anybody new coming into his life needs to know: “Show don’t tell”, to use his visual gift. You have to break things down into bite-sized chunks.
“The more intensity you put into it, the more he seems to thrive on it. He understands the reward from doing the work. He never whinges, he’ll just say ‘that was tough’.”
It bears saying this is not pushy parenting. For four years, swimming training started at 5am, meaning Angus’s alarm chimed at 4am. Across that entire period, Matthew only remembers having to wake him up once. He’d often do a second session in the evening too.
“[Angus’s autism] manifests itself very much in a need for routine, quite ritualistic, obsession-based, but not too much,” Matthew explains. “When he has an interest in things, he really has an interest in it.
“As long as we’ve got a programme and its written down, then he’s good. They’re perfect attributes for an athlete. He’s very, very, very self-motivated.”
Leckonby finishing the Middlesbrough half-marathon (Photo: Supplied)The furthest he has run is 35km, but he finished the Middlesbrough half-marathon in just over an hour-and-a-half earlier this year. The aim on Sunday is 3h 30m.
After the marathon, the next target is the Swim Serpentine, an outdoor swim in Hyde Park in September where he will aim to break the same records. The RideLondon 100 – a cycling race considered the third of the “London Classics” – has been postponed, but Leckonby will aim for that next year.
Longer term, a spot at the 2027 Special Olympics World Games in Chile is a dream. There is even talk of an Ironman attempt, and more records. Away from sport, he is training to become a lifeguard, and works for his parents’ French furniture and upholstery business.
Angus was non-verbal until he was five, a period in which Matthew was trying to resurrect a failing business and they also had a young daughter. Unable to communicate, his frustration became anger. They lost friends and were told to expect little from his life. Through love, dedication and sport, that could not be further from the truth.
“For someone with a young child with a diagnosis, I’m not going to sugar coat it, it’s hard,” Matthew explains. “You’re going to have days when you don’t know which way to turn, you’re going to have days where it’s brilliant and you don’t understand why.
“You’ve got to let the process happen. Create a good family environment where everyone feels safe to talk.
“Don’t listen to every demand, but when it comes to a passion and an interest, you run with it. You learn what this interest is and become as passionate about it as they are.
“It’s going to take your life in completely different directions to where you thought it was going. But that’s life anyway.”
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