Rick Stanton

Rick Stanton worked as a firefighter in Coventry while building, over several decades, a reputation as one of the most skilled and cautious cave divers in the world, exploring and often setting world distance records in flooded cave systems in Britain, France and Mexico. Cave diving of this kind involves swimming for hours through submerged passages in total darkness with no possibility of surfacing for air, work that rewards patience and extreme risk aversion far more than bravado.

In June 2018 twelve boys from a youth football team and their coach became trapped deep inside the Tham Luang cave system in northern Thailand after monsoon rain flooded the passages behind them. Stanton and his regular diving partner John Volanthen were flown in as part of an international effort after Thai authorities and military divers, working in unfamiliar and extremely difficult cave conditions, had failed to reach the group.

Stanton and Volanthen located the boys alive on a ledge, more than two kilometres inside the flooded cave, after a nine-day search through zero-visibility water. Getting them out required an option no one involved found straightforward: sedating each boy, fitting them with full-face masks, and swimming them out individually through hours of submerged, twisting passage where a panicking or convulsing child could drown both diver and boy. Stanton had reservations about the plan's risk but concluded, correctly, that it was safer than waiting for rising water to fill the cave completely.

All twelve boys and their coach survived the rescue, in which one former Thai navy diver died delivering air tanks along the route. Stanton was awarded the George Medal and has continued diving and consulting on rescue techniques since.