“The area was hit by extremely bad weather during the running race,” said the New China news agency. The plant, which was later stopped, took place in the so-called Stone Forest by the Yellow River near the city of Paiyin in Kansu Province.
172 runners set off on a hundred-kilometer route on Saturday at 9:00 (3:00 CEST). The photos showed competitors dressed in shorts and T-shirts under a cloudy sky. Around noon, the weather began to deteriorate rapidly, as soon as the competitors reached the mountainous part of the route. Temperatures dropped to six degrees Celsius in the foothills, but at higher altitudes it was colder and a strong wind blew.
Desperate call for help
“The rain was getting heavier and heavier,” one of the racers, Mao Shu-chi, told Reuters, who gave up the ultramarathon after 24 kilometers, partly because of her previous experience with hypothermia.
“At first I regretted it a bit, I thought it might have been a shower, but when I watched the wind and rain from the hotel window, I was happy to make that decision,” she added.
The runners, trapped by the weather in the mountains, desperately called for help from their mobile phones. “Come to the mountains and save those people. Many of them are freezing, some are lost, “quoted one of the text messages sent by the DPA agency.
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