Held for the last fourteen years and with continuous team involvement since 2004, the Horwich Festival of Racing (formerly known as the Horwich Carnival Races) are a day long series of running, orienteering and road cycling events held within Horwich Town Centre which uniquely is completely closed to traffic for the day in order for the races to be run in safety.
Races around the town centre circuit included youth cycle races and relay races, an 8 lap triathlon cycle, 5k road running and 5k open and 5k triathlon events, an adapted cycle ride, a Unicycle Road Race, various categories of adult and veteran cycle races, a one-lap street race and a fun run.
An orienteering event was also held within Lever Park.
As in all previous years the team had a major deployment regards this all day event, to provide standby rescue and first aid cover for the many races.
In total we had twenty Team Call Out members deployed around the course in our four Mountain Rescue Land Rover Defender Ambulances and our Minibus / Crewbus Ambulance.
Our involvement was co-ordinated from our Incident Control Vehicle by team member Mike Marsh, directly linking in with the Race Officials and Race Marshalling Teams.
As the Races effectively seal off Horwich Town Centre, though emergency access is obviously available, as with previous years we have linked to NWAS (Manchester) EOC Parkway, who liaise regards any ‘domestic’ incidents they are called to within the closed area, where we may assist, being immediately on hand, or otherwise advise regards responding Emergency Ambulances as to the progress of races and emergency area access points, in this respect we dealt with one call from NWAS, see Incident 54 for details.
Throughout the day regards the various events, team members also assisted with four casualties, see Incident 54 for details.
The Bolton Mountain Rescue Team is very happy to remain steadfastly associated with this annual fantastic ‘Festival of Racing,’and we would like to express our thanks to the organising committee for inviting us once again to be on hand in a very publicly visible way, to help at this unique and very entertaining local event (and as ever the catering packs supplied to all our members were welcomed as well!)
