Key facts
- Claims by the late Cambridge professor Jason Arday about running 30 marathons in 35 days for charity have been verified.
- Arday's assertion of playing semi-professional football for clubs like Walton and Hersham FC and Lewisham Borough FC is also supported.
- Local newspaper reports from 2010 detail Arday's marathon challenge, including fundraising for Shooting Star Children's Hospice and Shelter.
- Evidence suggests Arday's claims of raising significant collective funds for charity are plausible, given the financial scale of associated organizations.
- Arday, 42, resigned from Cambridge University and Jesus College Cambridge earlier this month amid plagiarism allegations.
Claims made by the late Cambridge University professor Jason Arday, particularly concerning his marathon running achievements and semi-professional football career, have been found to be true following an analysis by Middle East Eye. Arday, 42, died last Friday, having recently resigned from his professorial chair at Cambridge amid plagiarism allegations.
Media coverage had extensively questioned Arday's life story, with his claim of running 30 marathons in 35 days for charity being a focal point of ridicule. However, reports from the Richmond and Twickenham Times in 2010 detail this challenge, noting he ran to raise funds for Shooting Star Children's Hospice and the homeless charity Shelter. Arday was quoted at the time discussing his motivation, stemming from his own experience with homelessness at age 17.
Further reports from My London and Your Local Guardian from the same period corroborated the scale and gruelling nature of the marathon challenge, which Arday completed despite suffering a hairline fracture to his leg. Friends and charity representatives have also attested to the veracity of these runs.
His claim of playing semi-professional football has also been substantiated. MEE found records indicating Arday played goalkeeper for Walton and Hersham FC and Lewisham Borough FC, with a match report from October 2018 referencing him. A video posted on X by Nels Abbey also shows Arday with teammates.
Additionally, Arday's claim of raising over £5 million for charity, often described as a collective effort over two decades, appears plausible when considering the substantial income of the charities he was associated with, which collectively grossed between £1.4bn and £1.5bn.