Told by a surgeon at the age of 31 that chronic damage to his right shoulder meant he would never play rugby again, former Wales international Richard Parks “fell off the edge of a cliff”.

“It was like I was in free fall without anything to grab onto,” the ex-Newport and Pontypridd flanker told the South China Morning Post, adding that his self-worth spiralled as his identity slipped away.

“If I wasn’t Richard Parks the rugby player, who was I?” he said. “I always enjoyed being good at something; a big part of that was my physicality, so when my body broke I felt like the human being was broken.”

At his lowest ebb, Parks decided that he needed to earn his place on Earth by “surviving something”, an attitude he readily acknowledges was “really dark”.

Still, the 48-year-old believes that stark conclusion led him to become a world-leading endurance athlete and polar explorer, and the recent television sidekick of Hollywood superstar Will Smith.

“Some of these emotions, even now, are quite difficult to articulate,” Parks said. “Why did I choose mountains? It was the scariest thing I could think of and I needed that.”