William Goodge arrived at Bondi Beach on Monday a record holder. The British ultra-endurance athlete became the fastest person to run the width of Australia, beating previous holder Chris Turnbull by a whopping four days.
The 31-year-old set off on the gruelling 3,800km (2,361-mile) run from Cottesloe Beach in Perth on April 15, arriving in the sweeping white-sand crescent of Bondi just 35 days later.
To achieve the incredible feat, Goodge’s team say he covered the equivalent of two-and-a-half marathons a day — battling hallucinations, lost toenails, rotting feet, and even a dust storm in the process.
Goodge’s record is yet to be officially certified by Guinness World Records, who rubber-stamped Turnbull’s effort in 2023.
The year before, Australian electrician Nedd Brockmann raised millions for charity by completing the same challenge in 47 days.
Confirmation looks like a formality — and Goodge seems all but set to be crowned the fastest person to ever do it.
“This will take time to process,” he said. “Right now, I’m just deeply grateful to everyone involved, the people we met, and to the land and spirit of Australia.”
Goodge turned to marathons and extreme challenges following the loss of his mother to cancer in 2018. He finished his latest quest with his father by his side, laying a bunch of flowers by the shoreline in her memory.

Hundreds of runners also turned out to pound the pavement with him for the final stretch.
“I quickly found running was a way for me to deal with that emotional pain, and I took it to an extreme quite quickly after that,” he told The West Australian.
“When times get tough — which is quite frequent — I’ll think of her, and other people who are fighting for their lives who haven’t chosen to be in that position. I’ve chosen to be in the position I’m in, so I feel like I don’t have a valid excuse to stop.”
Who Is William Goodge?
Born in Ampthill, Bedfordshire, William Goodge is no stranger to a physical challenge. A former model and semi-pro rugby player, he quit the sport after too many knocks to the head.
Channelling his energy into running, Goodge has completed a number of calf-wrecking dashes that most could barely fathom.
His previous achievements include a 16-day, 1,350km run from John O’Groats in Scotland to Land’s End.
In 2021, he ran a whopping 48 marathons — one in each of England’s counties — in just 30 days.

Then in 2023, he powered through the 3,000-plus mile transcontinental run from Los Angeles to New York in just 55 days — claiming to be the quickest Englishman to ever do it.
He fell short of the world record on that occasion, which is held by American Pete Kostelnick, who managed it in a staggering 42 days and six hours.
William Goodge “warmed up” for his Australian challenge by ticking off 500km in five days in Japan, stomping his way from Osaka to Tokyo.
His résumé speaks for itself — and there’s little doubt he’s far from finished yet.
William Goodge: The Controversy
Not everyone has been a constant believer in William Goodge — despite his track record of raising huge sums for cancer charities around the world.
The Brit, who turned 31 during his latest challenge, has been forced to swat away plenty of scepticism — especially from the ultra-running community.
William Cockerell, a London-based runner, sportswriter, and statistics buff, flew to America to try and prove Goodge guilty of “watch muling” during his TransCon tour.
Ultra-running efforts like Goodge’s are almost entirely self-reported through tracking watches and apps — as you won’t find many third-party regulators willing to slum it roadside for the duration of the challenge.
Cockerell accused Goodge of falsifying data by swapping watches between runners, with his low heart rate during certain sections the main sticking point.
The trip resulted in a well-documented altercation between the two, before Cockerell flew back to London without any concrete evidence to support his claims.
Arguably, questions over Goodge’s heart rate are fuelled as much by his flippant exterior and boyish attitude as by the data itself.
As a former model and runfluencer, he’s not exactly your textbook running purist — and that might be part of why he’s put a few noses out of joint while chasing somewhat esoteric records.
Goodge maintains that his results have always been squeaky clean, and tracked his run on Garmin InReach and Strava this time around.
“I knew it was gonna come,” William Goodge told ABC Sport.
“I was prepared for that — it comes with the territory. And you can’t blame people for coming at you and questioning your stuff. Like, it’s just part and parcel of it.
“Obviously we do everything we can — like put the tracker up live — so if anyone ever wanted to come and see us, and we had a lot of people that wanted to come out and run, just come and find us. So yeah, you do everything you can.
“But there’s obviously a limit. I can’t livestream the whole event. Maybe that’s something you could do in future — but being on roads like that as well, it’s really tough.
“It’s tough to even think about having a car near me because it’s too dangerous.”
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