Tricia Sail, a community connections coordinator at the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), and her lifelong friend Cathie Rowe, were the first to cross the finish line on BBC One’s Race Across the World.
They competed against five other pairs in a 16,000km journey across Canada, starting at Vancouver in the west and finishing at the eastern-most city of St John’s in Newfoundland.
Sail told Optician she decided to apply after watching series one and two of the travel entertainment programme.
‘I’ve always wanted to travel but have always been afraid of travelling with my eyesight. Cathie and I have known each other since we were kids and we’ve done quite a few marathons together, London to Brighton a couple of times, and we’ve walked Machu Picchu. We just thought, “Why not?”’
In 2012, Sail began to lose her sight after being diagnosed with uveitis. It started in her right eye and six months later she started losing sight in her left eye.
Sail recalled the day it happened: ‘I was walking with Cathie and my right eye just popped. I didn’t feel anything. I heard the sound inside my head and then I had no sight whatsoever.’
She booked an appointment at an optical practice that referred her to hospital where she was referred again to Bristol Eye Hospital. Some sight was recovered but Sail lost about 30% of her vision. Now, she has between 3-5% vision remaining in her right eye and 10-12% in her left eye.
‘It stopped me from doing everything. I basically stayed in my house for six months and didn’t go out. I isolated myself. I thought I couldn’t do anything and I wasn’t going to be of use to anybody,’ she said.
Sail started to realise she could regain independence after speaking to several people from the RNIB who had less sight than she had, but still looked after their young children or regularly attended gigs and football matches. After attending an RNIB course on living with sight loss, Sail decided to change her lifestyle.
Challenging experiences
Sail and Rowe applied to be on Race Across the World in 2019 before Covid-19 delayed all activity on the show.
The pair never thought they would be successful in their application and had forgotten all about it when the call came at the end of 2021 for further interviews with the show’s producers.
Sail said that visiting new places can be a source of anxiety because of her sight loss and is reliant on Rowe whenever the pair go on a trip together.
‘The anxiety was through the roof, but I knew I was safe because I had Cathie with me. We’ve done so much together and her instinct is to tell me what’s going on or to mind the sign that I can’t see. During the race, I calmed down a little bit and then when we got to cities, my anxiety went up again,’ Sail explained.
Competing pairs on the programme were given a limited budget to reach checkpoints on their race across Canada, which often meant undertaking the arduous task of negotiating a carshare with a stranger and working numerous jobs to raise cash.
Sail and Rowe worked in a restaurant and shovelled manure on a farm but Sail enthusiastically threw herself into these jobs and knew what she was capable of doing.
‘I pushed myself because I thought, “If I don’t, I never will.” Some of the jobs were quite hard. In Ottawa, we were handing out leaflets and I was way out of my comfort zone. It seems the simplest job, handing out flyers. But being in an unfamiliar city and talking to random strangers was one of the worst jobs,’ she explained.
In the final episode of the programme, the pair unknowingly got ahead of the other couples after they took a different route and were the first to sign their names in the finishers book.
Winning was ‘absolute madness,’ she said. ‘It felt like I was looking at that page for about six months, thinking “Why aren’t there any other signatures?” Then it clicked that we’d won. We were so happy to have won but also a little bit sad cause it was the end of the race. We enjoyed every minute of it.’
Giving back
Since filming ended, Sail left her job at a bank and joined the RNIB where she facilitates sight awareness events, connecting people who live with sight loss and supporting people at the start of their sight loss journey.
‘I volunteered for RNIB for nine years prior. They gave me my life back and now I want to give back,’ Sail said.
She hoped her appearance on Race Across the World would help people realise that sight loss should not own them.
‘Sight loss owned me for a long time and I now own it. I can tell my sight loss that it’s not stopping me from climbing a mountain or running a marathon. I’m in charge, not the sight loss,’ Sail concluded.