How does being chained to a complete stranger, before being made to run 130 miles non-stop, sound? Kind of like a medieval torture technique?
It’s actually some people’s idea of a fun weekend activity. A way to push themselves to their limits, and one of the many new extreme running events popping up more and more in the UK and around the world.
Doug Kaye, a broker from Mann Broadbent, has learnt a lot about these events over the years. He specialises in sport and leisure insurance, and has had plenty of event organisers come to him to source insurance for their out-of-the-box events.
“Some of the events I’ve looked at this year, we had an unsupported ultra-endurance mountain bike race through the mountains of Kurdistan,” Kaye said. “That race was about 1,700 kilometres over two weeks.
“We also insured an ultra triathlon in Wales which was a six-mile swim, 261 mile cycle, and a 52 mile run. That was three days and they had 20 participants. You can see that there’s not many people who will be qualified to be entered in that kind of endurance race.”
But it’s not just punishing, hardcore events that Mann Broadbent gets involved with. Sometimes there’s a little magic, literally, in the organisations that they help.
“We insured a mass pillow fight once. We insured a mini tank driving experience,” he said. “We’ve insured mermaid experience days, where people get into a pool, they get into a monofin. You couldn’t even dream of this stuff.
“We worked with the Quidditch Premier League last season, sponsored them in fact. They had league days and then a finals day down in Cardiff. We worked closely with them. We’re looking to build on that this year. They’ve actually branched out into Europe this year.”
Quidditch, for those out of the know, is the sport invented by author J.K.Rowling and played by her characters in the fictional book and film series Harry Potter. Fans have invented their own league that is now played across the world.
Alongside all of these inventive activities, however, is quite a lot of risk. One common event Kaye insures is obstacle course races, where participants go on a 10-mile run as part of a team, and have to endure obstacles like mud pits, swings, climbing frames, or tunnels.
These require a lot of risk assessments and a lot of working with the client, to ensure that the course is as safe as possible.
“The risk assessments by the event organisers are quite key there,” he said, “to ensure they’ve considered all of the possible risks, and have done as much as they can to reduce the chance of any possible incidences taking place.”
There are many factors insurers will consider, according to Kaye, starting with if the event has enough food and water for participants, to the first aid and support crews on hand.
“You have to work quite closely with the insurers to get them to agree to offer some terms to insure the event organiser against liability coming back on them,” he said.
“That the participants are competent to do the swim, for example that they’re fit and healthy. Underwriters are keen to establish that all of that is in place.
“Obviously, they’ll also look at the client’s record, so they’ll want to see that the company is established, that they’ve got a track record, that they haven’t got a bad claims record.”
With these types of events there will always be some incidents - it’s the risk that is taken when signing up. But the key is for good assessments and for organisers to improve where they can, for example where people are hurting themselves by going down slides too quickly after each other.
“For the obstacle course racing you’ll always expect to see one or two claims,” Kaye said. “Those [the slide accidents] are some incidents we’ve been seeing quite a lot of, and it’s where race organisers have responded by really tightening up the marshalling on them.
“Already we’re seeing reduced numbers of incidents on those sort of obstacles because the organiser is reacting. So that’s something you can look at and improve on.”
