AFTER sinking hoops solidly for four-and-a-half hours, a mighty cheer went up from the crowd as Lewis Purbrick dunked the 2,000th ball.

Mr Purbrick and his wife Liz trained for the last six months for their challenge at Wantage Leisure Centre on Sunday.

The Grove couple, who have a seven-month-old son called Jack, asked friends and family to sponsor them to try to raise £5,000.

They want to pay for life-saving public defibrillators to be installed in their respective hometowns of Wantage and Abingdon.

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By the end of Sunday, they already had more than £4,000 and are still waiting on a few promises.

The sponsored event was inspired by Mrs Purbrick’s twin sister Vicky Gottwald, a one-time professional basketball player.

Miss Gottwald played basketball for Wales until her career was cut short by a cardiac arrest on court in May.

Luckily, the leisure centre she was playing at in Wales had a defibrillator and staff used it to save her life.

She was later diagnosed with a rare heart condition, arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, an irregular heartbeat.

Mrs Purbrick, 30, of Nobles Close, national disability manager for governing body England Athletics , said: “It was a massive shock, especially given how fit and healthy she was.

“We were so grateful that a defibrillator was there.”

She added: “The challenge went really well.

“When we started training we thought it would take us 10 hours to shoot 2,000 hoops, and even on the morning I thought six hours was a conservative estimate.”

The couple are waiting for South Central Ambulance Service to give them advice on the best place for the devices, which can shock the heart back to life.

By their own admission, they were not gifted basketball players, so they asked Miss Gottwald, who lives in North Wales, for some coaching.

She was there on Sunday to watch as her brother-in-law sank the final hoop.

Mr Purbrick, 31, a flood risk advisor for the Environment Agency, said he was “aching a bit” after the four-and-a-half hour challenge, but was pleased to have learnt a new skill.

He added “It was very rewarding to raise this huge amount of money.”

Miss Gottwald, who no longer plays basketball on doctors’ advice, said: “The money Liz and Lewis are raising is for an incredibly worthy and literally life-saving cause.”

Sponsor the couple at justgiving.com/hoopsforhearts

BACK THE CAMPAIGN

In July, South Central Ambulance Service divisional responder manager Dick Tracey appealed for help to boost defibrillator numbers from 120 to 320 by May next year.

The Oxford Mail is backing his campaign so that everyone in the county will be no further than 10 minutes away from the nearest device.

Mr Tracey hopes to have all of them installed by the end of May and has seen a huge amount of interest from the community so far in completing this campaign.

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