“I’ve had asthma since age one, and as a kid, it would’ve been nice to see someone doing something—anything—with asthma,” Wilson says.

And although completing the Vendee Globe was a major success, Wilson admits to having reservations in the beginning.

“The Vendee Globe was too long, too hard, too dangerous,” he says, joking that “I would’ve rather go played in a Superbowl with the Patriots just to take a day off.”

But inspiring kids of all ages to persevere in the face of difficulty gave him the motivation to push through to the end.

Lorraine Leo, a teacher at the Jackson School in Newton, Mass., has used sitesAlive! with her students since 2001. In that time, she has witnessed first-hand the level of inspiration Wilson creates for her students.

“The younger girls thought it was nice to see him competing against women from other nations,” she explains. “They really liked that.”

Leo used Wilson’s journeys to teach her students from a “global perspective.” Still, she hoped her students would take from the voyages something more than the experience of simply watching a sporting event.

“I always emphasized his perseverance,” she says, “to show that despite his severe asthma, his circumstances, and regardless of whether or not he won or lost, he would always keep trying.”