For his latest physical challenge, he is taking on the English Channel, hoping to swim the 33 km from Dover to Calais Thursday (Sept. 2). The first successful cross-channel swim was in 1875 by Englishman Captain Webb. Since then many have attempted the feat. However, 70 percent or more have been defeated by the combination of cold water and strong tides that necessitate the challenger actually means has to swim up to 40 km in the attempt.
“I want to experience the cold, pain, and suffering and see if I am physically and especially mentally strong enough to make this happen,” Ragsdale told Arab News on Monday. The English Channel swimmer is part of an exclusive club. “On Sept. 2, I will do everything in my power to make sure I join this club,” he said.
Scott is also a two-time Ironman finisher, has run more than 20 marathons, climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, and successfully completed the seven-day Marathon des Sables, considered to be the most difficult foot race in the world, across the Sahara desert in Morocco. His next self-imposed challenge is to run a marathon across the Amazon rainforest.
Reluctantly admitting to being a “driven” man, Ragsdale said that the triggers to his life were falling 17 meters off a cliff, breaking multiple bones and cutting short a possible career as an international class swimmer and then seeing a friend paralyzed in a car accident.
“He was a huge man, potentially a great football star. He crashed a car after partying and ended his career.” Ragsdale came to the conclusion that there were exceptional people in the world, but many never achieved their potential because they allowed something to distract them and change their focus. In the case of the footballer, it was self-indulgence.
Since then, Ragsdale has devoted his life to maximizing his own potential. It would be disingenuous to conclude that he is an egocentric man. Far from it. He regards himself as “not much different from other guys — it’s just that I am more focused. I feel the cold and the pain just as they do.” For him, ego is about providing the ambition for people to be the best they can possibly be. He has a beguiling knack of seeing things in simple black and white terms, setting goals for himself and above all, focusing on achieving them with the simple exhortation “Make it happen!” He said that the world was full of exceptional people who had the talent to be great football players, great salesman and great leaders. “How many people fail to achieve their full potential because something gets in the way of their focus?” he wondered.
Ragsdale noted that all the businessmen he had been training with had given up. “I feel the cold and seasickness as they do – I suppose I cannot just sit behind a desk thinking about it, I have to get out and do it.” Now turning 40, Ragsdale admitted that the difficulties he encountered due to the recent global financial crisis had made him realize that his personal priorities had been wrong. “I had been focusing too much on business instead of making my life happen.”
Ragsdale is roundly critical of the “Facebook culture” which he sees as encouraging children to sit at a computer for hours, waste their lives and be satisfied with being mediocre. “I want people to go out and make something of themselves,” he said.
“I do these adventure challenges to experience life to its fullest, but also to inspire my daughters, friends as well as employees not to just sit around and talk about what they are going to do, but instead to go out and try and make their goals and life happen.”
And the Cuban cigars? Ragsdale has assembled one of the biggest private collections of fine Cuban cigars in the world. Being as fit as he is he smokes them but, in best Clintoneque style, probably does not inhale.  Arab News will be following Ragsdale’s progress in the Channel attempt on the website “http://www.arabnews.com”.