2 deaths at Comrades Marathon - Safe and effective?

They had 16000 runners signed up.

People die. That's just a fact of life. If you have enough people in a race they die there too.

Those type type are capable of dropping dead on a Sunday run, so yes it is safe as houses.

Do you claim that they would have died that day if they stayed home and sat on the couch?

Spoiler alert...NOT BLOODY LIKELY!

They probably wouldn't have died on that day but probably shortly after that.

Probably in their next long run.

Despite the name it's a ~55 mile course, you have to be a sub-4:50 marathoner to enter, and after 20 miles the organisers start pulling people of the course (halfway distance cut-off is 6:10; the event is ended after 12 hours).

No idea if the time cut-offs contribute (ie people trying to pick up the pace to reach the next checkpoint) but with a field of 15,000+ I'm amazed that there aren't more fatalities.

Do your research. A simple google search of the Chicago, Boston, and NY marathons show people have died during the running of all these marathons over the years. It happens. So what. I would love to go out doing something I loved/participated in my whole life.

Another boring TMAD post.

From the article:

James added that a total of 74 runners had been transported to
hospital – 41 to St Augustine's and 33 to Netcare Umhlanga – after
Comrades shut its medical facilities at 20:00 on Sunday night.
Of those, two remain in ICU presently. One is still on a ventilator.

Does anyone know of people who have taken part in ultras etc who have never fully recovered from their efforts?

Just curious.

I just did a search for deaths during a marathon. It was 1 death for 259,000 participants.

Two would be an anomaly, but if more of those who were taken to the hospital die, then we have a non-random event. Something caused those deaths outside the normal stress of racing a very long distance.

I don't know the weather conditions, but that would be the most likely first place to look. If weather can be ruled out, the next risk to rule out would be the covid vaccination. An autopsy would be the next step, but the cause of running-related deaths cannot always be determined by autopsy. It's difficult to determine cause of death because it has something to do with the rapid decay of blood chemistry after death. That's how a doctor explained it to me. Sorry, not an expert here. Maybe someone else can explain it better.

So you guys all denying the truth. The higher the workload on the heart, the jabbed are dying.

So two deaths doesn’t bother anyone. What if it was 20? Still wouldn’t raise a flag?

Still not even 1/10 000 of covid deaths, so no.

More likely Long COVID caused, IMO.

see, I can make stuff up too

I think the deaths are to a large degree as an effect of covid, but not from long Covid or the jabs ...

Rather the races have been cancelled for the last couple of years due to Covid and the normal prep races and training haven't been around so I would assume the average runner was a lot worse prepared than the previous years and therefore increasing the risk significantly of something going wrong.

The race was also two months later than normal this year so people may not have trained correctly following their normal patterns from the past

Also comparing 90km run to a marathon statistically is almost the equivalent of comparing a 5km to a marathon. The race only "starts" in the last 30km of a 90km

How many runners have died in previous years is the question.

This was the 95th running.

First deaths as far as I can tell.

Note that the wikipedia entry covers the entire history with no mention of any deaths other than 2022

en.wikipedia.org

Comrades Marathon

The Comrades Marathon is an ultramarathon of approximately 89 kilometres (55 mi) which is run annually in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa between the cities of Durban and Pietermaritzburg. It is the world's largest...

Open link

Can anyone find documentation of deaths prior to 2022 during this event?

In the history of this race, there had been eight previous deaths leading up to the 2022 event.

Apparently.

Could this not perhaps be the problem.

No 4;50 marathon runner ,jogger then walk person should be able to enter a 55 mile ultra.

The race organizers just want to cash in on as many entries as possible and dont care that a 4;50 hobby jogger has little chance of finishing before the cutoffs