Two strangers, bound by the worst thing imaginable, are about to cross the finish line together at the London Marathon.
Sergio Aguiar and David Stancombe had never met before the summer of 2023. What brought them together was the murder of their daughters, Alice Aguiar and Elsie Stancombe, killed in the Southport stabbing attack that shocked the country. They were six and seven years old. Bebe King, aged six, also died that day.
Now the two fathers are running 26.2 miles through the streets of London, not just to raise money, but because, as Sergio puts it, the training has turned them into something neither expected.
“Running for our girls has made us like brothers,” he said. “We’ve been through something nobody else can understand. But we understand each other.”
It’s the kind of friendship that shouldn’t exist, forged entirely out of grief. But there’s something quietly powerful about watching two dads refuse to let their daughters be forgotten.
They began training together in the months following the attack, meeting up regularly, pounding pavements, talking. Sometimes about Alice and Elsie. Sometimes about nothing much at all. The running, David has said, gave them both a reason to get out of the house on the days when getting out felt impossible.
The London Marathon draws around 50,000 runners each year, and tens of thousands more line the route cheering strangers on. This year, somewhere in that crowd, people will be holding signs for two little girls from Southport.
The pair are raising funds for the Southport Flower of Hope, a tribute garden being created in the town in memory of the victims. Every mile, every blister, every early morning run in the February cold has been pointed at that goal.
Grief does strange things to people. Sometimes it isolates. Sometimes, if you’re fortunate enough to find someone who truly gets it, it pulls you closer to another human being than you ever thought possible.
Whether running a marathon actually helps heal something this raw is a question only Sergio and David can answer. But they’ll be crossing that finish line together, and that seems to matter enormously to both of them.
