Weight-loss fighter from Peterborough had to prove identity after beingunrecognisable to Thai border guards

A martial arts enthusiast from Bretton in Peterborough is preparing to return to Thailand despite an earlier scrape with border officials.

Ross Connor (33) of Bretton, lost so much weight during a gruelling year long training camp that when he tried to fly back to the UK, airport officials queried his identity.

Border guards held him for questioning, claiming he could not be the same person they photographed on his arrival 12 months earlier.

They quizzed him and he had to talk his way back on to his flight home by showing photographs on his iPad of his weight loss.

Ross, who is now self-employed, had enrolled at the renowned Muay Thai kick boxing gym in Phuket and during the year underwent a rigorous training regime.

He worked out four hours a day in the blistering heat and by the end of the year had gone from 21 stone to 13 stone.

He said: “When I went out to Thailand in March last year, I weighed about 21 stone. I had tried every diet going.

“But when I came back from Thailand I weighed about 13 stone.

“But I really want to get down to about 11 stone.

“Now it is all about scraping together every penny so I can go back out there.

“It is going to cost about £6,000 for the training course.

“But I found it is a better way of life out there. And I went out there to fight and that’s want I want to do.

Mr Connor, who used to run the former Boro Bar, in Oundle Road, and which has just been converted into a Tesco store, said: “I just want to go back out to Thailand and carry on my training.

“I wasn’t detained at the airport by the guards and I was not petrified.

“What happened was that because I had lost so much weight, the officials were not sure I was the same person as the one they had taken a picture of when I arrived.

“They took me into another room and I showed them photographs on my iPad taken over the 12 months I was training and which showed how my weight had come down.

“They all laughed and congratulated me on my efforts.

“The whole thing took about 15 minutes and I didn’t even miss my flight.

“I was never worried or scared. There are always ways of proving who you area.”

Mr Connor said: “I seemed to have put on weight over about 10 years and I just got fed up with the way fat people are treated,

“No one takes you seriously and no one listens to your opinions

“I found I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do and people treated me differently

“I wasn’t happy with myself and I remembered seeing a Jack Osbourne documentary about six years ago in which he goes out to a Muay Tai martial arts training camp to lose weight.

“It inspired me and I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

“So last March I decided to take action and paid £6,000 to enrol at the year-long boxing camp on the island of Phuket.”

Resource: http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/news/local/weight-loss-fighter-from-peterborough-had-to-prove-identity-after-being-unrecognisable-to-thai-border-guards-1-6078851