Two die in the Ironman at Youghal

If it is a non-sanctioned event due to TI not sanctioning it, would their volunteers/safety teams in the water be insured to be there? Would TI not have a duty of care towards them??

Tribute for the two men

Wetsuits are for wimps anyway

I think there's a misconception around what TI do.

Typically the TI team would be small, say 2 officials, 1 who will liaise with the RD over a couple of months pre race (checking the race plan and ensuring it's up to scratch) and then on the day do the final sanction (written, co-signed race licence); the second official will be race referee on the day.

These people are not employees, they have to do specific training, but get paid expenses only. They do it to support the sport, very often they are triathletes themselves.

For small events TI may even send only one person (covering everything), for large events (or championship races) there can be say 5 or 6 sent, but the additional people being more involved with referee assistance (drafting enforcement).

TI do NOT provide safety cover in the water or anywhere else, they do NOT marshall the event, and they do not organise any part of the race.

They would make sure that cover is appropriate and in place as part of their assessment / sanction.

@griffin100 above post is excellent too for understanding what TI do.

So TI staff leaving the event would not have put competitors in danger. Which flies in the face of some of the comments above

Yes, hopefully if there were safety shortcomings they can be remediated, but it would be terrible if there was another knee-jerk reaction and made it harder to stage events like this in Republic of Ireland. You could argue that the full Iron Man is not a good idea for anyone:

https://www.trainingpeaks.com/coach-blog/athlete-deaths-in-triathlon-and-how-to-prevent-them/

"As well as having almost twice as many deaths as marathons, triathlons differ in another respect—the timing of those deaths. In marathons, deaths usually occur late in the race or just after the finish, whereas for triathlons, the vast majority of deaths happen early, often in the first minutes of the race. This difference can be attributed to the presence of a swim in triathlons and all of the stresses that puts on the heart right at the beginning of the race."

but people should be free to take certain risks, once those risks are made clear to them in advance.

For example, adventure tourism in Ireland is struggling to survive: https://www.rte.ie/news/primetime/2023/0511/1383107-insurance-costs-crippling-adventure-tourism-say-centre-owners/

"The problems that the Irish adventure tourism sector has with insurance are not replicated elsewhere in Europe, Great Britain or even in Northern Ireland. This is an Irish problem"

The swim went ahead but no one considered the storm the day before. Under normal conditions when the tide is filling the current runs west east parallel to the beach in towards the town. On Saturday the event was cancelled due to the storm. The wind was w/sw. This greatly increases the speed of the current. This increase in speed can last up to three days after the storm. For the average person they would not notice this due to the swells breaking. So when they were swimming out the current was taking them away from the marker they were heading for. This meant you had to swim harder to get to the marker. You also had the swells breaking but this was closer to the beach only. Once they rounded the marker they were now going with the current and most swimmers said they flew into swim end.

I can tell you as a participant in the race that the swim was fine, yes it was choppy getting to the first turn but once reached the current was pushing you back towards the swim exit.

Bit of a stretch to say no one considered the storm the day before - the 70.3 had already been postponed from the day before!

The day of the race is not the time to be entering the ocean for the first time and realising theres such a thing as a current in the sea - ironmans own beginner ironman training plans have you training for this 6 months out and from 4 months out swimming an ocean swim once a week with probably 6-10km of swimming a week - anyone who is doing that will have no problem.

Its good to get honest unbiased posts like this. I never trust the media after an incident like this. Shock and fear sells, strange how it is only the participants that were fearful of their lives that get onto the vox pops.

A friend of my brothers said he found the swim fine as well.

Even some where delighted with their swims.

I don't remember the exact times but I think they were expecting the first few swimmers to do it in around 20 minutes so were surprised to see the leader do it in 14 minutes and so many seconds.

times podcast....

Behind a paywall again, but Irish Times article today saying Ironman plan to sue TI next week unless their statement is withdrawn.

Also confirms that Arachas was the insurer and TI CEO emailed clubs last Friday night to say Arachas had confirmed the personal accident policy “was operative during the event” subject to “usual” terms and conditions. Surprised me to read that so clear, presumably Arachas accept claims to be made by the two athletes, or had Arachas been able to confirm insurance was primarily Ironman's insurer??

Interesting in any event to now see TIs next move: crumble or double down.

Thanks Mike. I would be interested in clarifying a couple of things, mainly in an effort to try to understand what TI have been saying.

You reckon that if the race was not sanctioned by TI, there would have been no personal accident insurance (notwithstanding any insurance Ironman have). I think we all would expect that, but that is not what the CEO of TI has said publicly.

I suppose I am trying to rationalise the two CEO actions, namely:

• Mon 21 August - high profile press release clearly saying TI could not [and did not] sanction the event
• Fri 25 August - email to all clubs clarifying the event insurance was "operative during the event" never the less

This seems to suggest that insurance cover was not dependent on TI sanction?

Also, I get what you say about Arachas being a broker (not an insurer) and that you'd expect they would have no say on cover. But the Irish Times report that Arachas DID clarify cover, and did so presumably because TI were seeking clarification from them which they intended to publish to their members via clubs? Why would Arachas not have reserved comment or directed TI to ask the insurer? You would have to think that TI asked Arachas, Arachas asked the insurer, and the clarity was then sent out??

It doesn't really matter whether not the personal accident cover was in place during the event. The families of the 2 men who died will get a small payout under this policy if it was in place if there is a payment for death on the policy. On these types of policies there usually is and it's probably around €25k / €50k.

The big potential for a civil claim here is around whether or not there was negligence on behalf of TI or IM that lead to the participant deaths. That will require the families of the deceased to take a claim against either of both of the parties and for a legal judgement to be made in favor of the plaintiff or defendant(s), or it could be settled without going to trial. If found liable TI or IM's liability insurers would probably cover the costs of any payout, but event if they didn't TI is an NGB affiliated to Sport Ireland and IM is a multi national multi million entity. Both will be fine in dealing with any uninsured costs. People tend to get caught up on insurance, but lots of large organisations operate with essentially no insurance and they 'self insure' for claims made against them, i.e. pay out the claims from their reserves or a special fund that they put aside - Dublin Bus for example self insures against personal injury claims (or at least they used to).

@Furze99 - "A large events management company from outside the state runs an event in conditions that maybe shown in court to be reckless and the taxpayer might pick up the tab....."

Hey that rings a bell, where did we see that before? Oh yeah with the catholic paedophile priest scandal. Sure it only cost us taxpayers a billion or so...

Excellent context, thanks @griffin100

It's all gone a bit quiet on this. Has it been swept under the carpet already?

The gardai are part of the investigation now so it's unsurprising the tit-for-tat has ceased.

As someone who participated in the swim / IM this is the first I've seen of this request. Surely they can get the list of participants from IM / TI

It's an appeal to the general public not just the competitors and it was only announced today.

Details here, don't think all the bluster by Ironman about suing has much of a leg to stand on.

As the event was due to take place on the Saturday some people of the dns may have been unable to do the Sunday start to accommodation or transport plans. The dnf would probably be the best measure.