Held for the last twelve 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 5k road running and 5k road walking events, a fun run (with prizes for those competitors in fancy dress) various youth and senior cycle races, and for the first year ever at this event, and a UK first , the UK National Open Unicycling Road Race.
There was also an associated Sprint Orienteering event held in the nearby extensive wooded and grassland terrain of 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 thirty Team Call Out members deployed around the course, (And in Lever Park for the event held there) in our four Mountain Rescue Land Rover Ambulances and our Minibus / Crewbus Ambulance.
Our involvement was co-ordinated from our brand new Incident Control Vehicle, directly linking in with the Race Officials and Race Marshalling Teams.
Throughout the day regards the various events, thankfully the team was not called to anything more serious than a few cuts and grazes (Still painful though!)
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 ‘closure’ 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.
During the day team members responded to two ‘off course’ emergency call outs, neither associated with the Horwich Festival of Racing events. (Please see Incident Reports 72 and 73-2013)
Todays Festival of Racing also saw the return of the Horwich Carnival weekend being held the same time as the race weekend.
Regards today, this meant at 12.00hrs the very popular Horwich Carnival Parade took place, featuring all the local Carnival Queens, a Pipe Band, African Dance and Drums Band, Local youth, church and other organisations (Some really great fun floats) the ‘Eden Bus,’ the Rotary Club, Horwich Prize Morris Men, Rivington Prize Ladies Morris Dancers, Cheerleaders, massed local motorbikes in convoy, including some wonderful trike bikes (All very enjoyable noisy!) and bringing up the rear our very own BM3 Land Rover Ambulance.
We would like to offer our sincere thanks to an anonymous lady who kindly made an impromptu £5.00 cash donation to team members ‘on duty’ at Brownlow Road today.
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.
