Transylvania 100 Turns Dicey

Picking up here a personal report from Anna Simonsson-Søndenå on Instagram after hearing and seeing several mentions on my feed about this race:

Multiple-incident accident at the Transylvania 100 mountain marathon competition. Mountain rescue teams were required to intervene in 15 cases, three of which were more serious. All injured persons have been stabilized. The presence of a bear was also reported on a hiking section, but the animal was driven away before it could attack anyone.

This is never a great look for a race organization. If one person gets in trouble it’s an accident, if many people need to get rescued on the same stretch of the trail it feels negligent by the race organizers. In a situation like this you either postpone the race, properly mark and secure the course with ropes and S&R on site to help people traverse the questionable sections, or warn runners up front of what is to expected on race day. As trail running is going in popularity the last option is increasingly a challenging proposition as runners don’t read race manuals or think they can skip the mandatory gear. Just look at the behavior of some of the elite runners at UTMB these past couple of years for examples of this.