Originally published at: Hundreds sick with pustules, fever, and more after participating in Tough Mudder Sonoma | Boing Boing
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Tough Mudders participants do have to fill out a ream of paperwork and disclaimers up to and including “you might die. not our fault.” I would assume that bizarre infections are included in that.
Considering where these venues have been set up and what they end up with for mud/water obstacles, I’m actually somewhat surprised there haven’t been cases of flesh / brain eating bacteria and amoebae.
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These waivers don’t really protect the business if it can be shown that they’ve been negligent (as far as i understand).
Also before i read anything the first thing that came through my mind was “They got sick because it was probably because of poo”. And sure enough that’s what it was
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Turns out dirt is dirty
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This will be the subject of much litigation in Ireland soon I imagine.
Obviously Ironman are a big company and are fairly sure they can litigate this away. Triathlon Ireland didn’t sanction the event. Timelines aren’t clear. The footage is though. If you were a ship you shouldn’t have been in that water. I genuinely thought it was antartic penguins shuffling into the sea when I saw it first and had to blink.
ETA to be clear two people died in the water.
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I have a friend who does these and other obstacle course type races. I guess I never thought about the dangers of playing in the mud, but it is out there.
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In my more cynical moments, I would be tempted to suggest that if your idea of fun is crawling through fifteen miles of muddy ditches, then a brain-eating bacterial infection could well be a pre-existing condition.
But to each their own, I guess.
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Living near here and often seeing the raceway’s giant herd of grass-control sheep as well as cattle grazing nearby my first reaction to this was “OK, makes sense.”
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… if only they gave out medals for drinking iced tea by the pool 
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WTF! They crawl through mud in skimpy clothing and wonder why they have skin infections?
And they are doing FOIA requests to find out what “due diligence” the organizers did, and want compensation?
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Does FOIA apply to private orgs?
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Just FYI, this is certainly not swimmer’s itch. that is a short lived, annoying, itchy rash but no systemic symptoms.
Fever, myalgias and headache? Nope, something more serious than that.
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They are designating a course for people to race on so should be having some basic tests of water sanples carried out.
I run (manage) a public pool.
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Carrying health insurance should be required of those signing up for such events.
FTFY.
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Rolling around in the mud is not itself inherently dangerous (let’s not give in to germophobia here) so presumably this was a feces situation. Like the field where it took place used to be a pig farm or cattle paddock, I’m guessing?
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There was an outbreak of disease at the Glastobury festival a few years ago, when there was a lot of rain and the whole area (which is a working farm with cattle) turned into a sea of mud
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