It’s a medic tent not a food tent

A well known runner thought she would catch her breath at the medical tent of The Greatest Train Race but when she arrived she was denied a bed, and professional treatment.

Ms Lesley Vermeulen has been an athlete for close to 30 years competing in a number of road running races, the past weekend she took part in The Greatest Train Race and suffered from a spell of hyper-ventilation and ended up walking to the finish of the race where the medical tent was situated.

“At about 15km through the race I felt something wasn’t right and asked Abie, my running partner, to help me to the finish line,” said Vermeulen.

Mr Abie Smit held Vermeulen by the hand and guided her to the finish line at a walker’s pace.

“I lost my breath and started feeling dizzy and disorientated,” said Vermeulen.

The two veteran runners walked the remaining 13km of the race. As Vermeulen received her medal for completing the race her partner advised her to visit the medical tent, she questioned where it was and headed straight for it.

“I knew that when I came to a standstill that would be me gone, I got to the tent, everyone was sitting and eating, I then asked for assistance and they all looked at me as if I was crazy,” said Vermeulen.

Vermeulen went over to one of the stretchers to lie down, she first had to ask the medical staff that was using it as a table to eat from, to move – again she was given a look.

“It wasn’t a medical tent it was an eating tent, I had to climb over people to get to Lesley,” said Smit.

“I was at the brink of collapsing when one of the medical staff said ‘daar is ander verpleegsters, ek het my gat af gewerk, ek kyk nie na haar nie’, I was shocked to hear those words coming from a medical staff member,” said Vermeulen.

Vermeulen expressed her disappointment in the staff at the medical tent of The Greatest Train Race and compared the help she received on Saturday to that of an incident that occurred roughly a year back when a fellow runner suffered a heart attack, the medical staff in that tent saved the runner’s life that day.

“Fortunately for me I was okay in the end but if I had suffered a heart attack I would have been dead. If you’re working the medical tent then peoples’ lives should take priority over food – I understand they may have had a long day, but that is no excuse,” said Vermeulen.

She added that in the previous two weekends she had competed in the 50km 12-Hour Northview Challenge, and the following weekend of August 15 she cycled 66km in the Sun City Cancer Challenge – not to mention she has 27 Loskop Marathons under her belt.

“I have the running experience and I knew something was not right, what happened at that tent was very unprofessional and very unpleasant for me, how are we supposed to develop the sport of running in Mpumalanga if incidents like this happen,” she said.

“The Greatest Train Race organising committee take the safety and wellbeing of all the supporters of this event very seriously. Apart from all the traffic arrangements we also arranged medical support along the route in the form of a quick response patrol vehicle and an ambulance and then obviously also the medical tent at the finish area in Middelburg. We are obviously very concerned about Ms Vermeulen’s experience and sincerely apologise to her. And we want to assure her and our thousands of supporters that we shall investigate this case thoroughly and learn from it,” said Mr Max Köhler, 2015 Train Race Convenor.