Hello I have been requested to make a comment relating to safety on the race course and comments made by a runner from Hong Kong/China who was unfortunately deaf and wanted to compete in the TMBT 2014. At the present moment, the TMBT organization is unable to accept registrations from both visual and hearing disabled runners for safety reasons and for the fact the risks are significantly higher for runners who not only cannot see the race course on their own (without or without helpers) and/or cannot hear their mobile phones in the event of the need for emergency contact and the inability to communicate with race course officials. We had a request from a competitor today essentially scolding us for not allowing such competitors to complete as we had a self-imagined risk assessment. I can assure you our self imagined risk assessment takes many things into account and we, despite the fact not being from Hong Kong or an expat run organization as the runner in question was referring to, have spent the better part of 15 years organizing races in Borneo and are quite capable of applying sensible and common sense decision making when it comes issues on safety. To quote the runner in question/Content of the email reads: I survived over 20 times of 4000-7000 Meters altitude trekking in the past 5 years, ranging from Himalaya thoughest ridges to the jungle and mountain at border of China and Burma, and have been racing in over 10 endurance races from 50K to 100 miles both in HK and China. I personal could not agree with your self-imagined higher risk degree that a hearing impaired person may pose to the race than other racers, especially in my case. I welcome comment and suggestions on safety and protocols but some races are not designed for visually/hearing impaired competitors. And this is a reality of races around the world. Thierry Main-Source Race Advisor
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 04:52:49 +0000
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