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Friday, December 13, 2024

Organizer of the Formentera Half Marathon: “The mistake is ours and nobody else’s”

The health services attended to 22 people, two of whom ended up in the hospital after the Formentera Half Marathon.

Three days after the celebration of the Formentera half marathon in which more than two thousand runners participated in the 21 kilometers, complaints about the lack of water on the course are increasing. The poor organization of the race, especially with the lack of foresight from Unisport Consulting when supplying water for the longest race, resulted in almost a thousand runners being left without hydration when they were halfway through the race.

Competitors in hospital after Formentera Half Marathon

The health services had to attend to 22 people for heat stroke and dehydration, especially from kilometer 18. Two of them had to be transferred by ambulances to Hospital de Formentera. One man suffered heat stroke and after spending the night in the health center was discharged on Sunday morning. The second case was a woman with different symptoms but was discharged the same Saturday.

The director of the company hired (Unisport Consulting) by the Consell de Formentera to organize the Formentera Half Marathon, Manuel Hernรกndez, acknowledged on Monday to Diario de Ibiza that they have received numerous complaints, without specifying how many: “Yes, we have received complaints and rightly so. We have recognized the error and I still maintain that  “the error is ours and no one else’s, certainly not the Consell, as is being suggested”. “We miscalculated the water consumption and I take responsibility, I made a mistake.”

“We miscalculated the water consumption and I take responsibility, I made a mistake”

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Hernรกndez said that they do not serve water bottles in any event they organize “by law, not because we do not want to, there is a Balearic rule that prohibits the use of single-use containers”. That’s why they have changed the system to hydrate the runners, putting cardboard cups that are filled with water from carafes by volunteers.

The thing is that when a runner in motion grabs the cup on the fly, half of its contents spills and the rest is usually thrown away. The result is that more than half of the water is wasted.

But the most serious thing was not that the system to hydrate the participants was in itself a disaster but that at kilometer 10 of the race, the third refreshment station, there was no more water. The result was that half of the runners began to panic. Then some neighbors who noticed the situation, came out to the road to offer water. Other runners did not hesitate to stop, as they passed through Sant Ferran, to buy water in one of the open supermarkets, where there was even a queue.

The Guardia Civil, in the final kilometers of the Formentera Half Marathon, and on a voluntary basis, carried bottles of water that they distributed among the runners.

For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.

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