It was not the flame pits, barbed wire or icy waters that took their toll of Wallington pupils competing in a renowned endurance contest.

It was a wind-raked field in Staffordshire.

Sixth-form students at Wilson's School had just risen to the biannual Tough Guy challenge when their coach became stuck in deep mud and had to be pulled to safety by a tractor.

It was a sticky end to the team's otherwise successful particpation in a race billed as the "world's most demanding one-day survival ordeal".

But the 40 boys were still applauded for raising about £4,000 for multiple sclerosis research when they returned home to Mollison Drive slightly later than expected.

Only three team members were defeated by the torturous course, involving an eight mile cross-country run and obstacles such as blazing bales, electric fences, underwater tunnels and 40ft drops.

Anyone who crosses the finish line can claim, with some justification, to be a genuine tough guy.

In the 2001 contest, 700 endurance junkies developed hypothermia and in 1997 seven broke legs.

John Molyneux, Wilson's director of sport, said: "The real killers were the dreaded river crossings, some of which were too deep to walk through, and demanded submersion of the whole body.

"This really seemed to take its toll, with many people dropping out, either through hypothermia or just sheer exhaustion.

"The return to school was no less incident-filled, with the coach quite literally becoming stuck in the mud.

"But if you are going to breakdown, my advice is breakdown where there is a tractor nearby."

Of the 5,000 entrants, 3,000 completed the course.

Several were honouring the "orignal tough guys", including Jesus, Ernest Shackleton, Enoch Powell and Mohammed Guru Gobind Singh.