甘肃越野跑比赛幸存者回忆惊魂时刻
‘I Owe Him My Life’: Chinese Runner Describes Mountain Rescue
艾莎, 曹莉
2021年5月25日
The day began in jittery anticipation as 172 Lycra-clad runners jumped up and down at the starting line of the 62-mile mountain race in Gansu Province, China. Zhang Xiaotao noticed the wind as it blew the hats off some of his competitors. It was an early sign of the challenge ahead.
这一天在充满紧张不安的期待中开始了，172名穿着莱卡运动服的跑者在中国甘肃百公里越野赛的起跑线位置上下跳跃。张小涛发现起风了，风刮掉了一些选手的帽子。这预示着他们即将面临的挑战。
A few hours later, Mr. Zhang, 30, would be lying unconscious on the rugged mountain, according to a written account that he shared on Chinese social media.
根据他在中国社交媒体上分享的文字记录，几个小时后，30岁的张小涛躺在崎岖的山上，失去了知觉。
Mr. Zhang, a sports blogger, was among the group of survivors who were rescued when whipping rain turned to hail and temperatures plummeted hours into the ultramarathon on Saturday. More than 1,200 rescuers were dispatched to find bodies in the storm. Twenty-one runners died, many of them after suffering from hypothermia.
周六进行的超级马拉松开始几小时后，大雨转为冰雹，气温骤降，体育博主张小涛是获救的幸存者之一。1200多名救援人员出动，在暴风雨中寻找遇难者。21名选手死亡，其中许多人死于失温。
According to his account, Mr. Zhang began to climb the toughest part of the race when icy rain and hail fell harder and obscured his view. “It kept hitting my face and my eyes began to blur, and I couldn’t see the road clearly,” he wrote.
据张小涛说，当他开始进入比赛中最艰难的爬升赛段时，冰雨和冰雹越下越大，遮挡了他的视线。他写道：“一直往脸上砸，我眼睛都开始模糊了，有些看不清路。”
The wind grew so strong that he slipped and fell nearly a dozen times until he could no longer pick himself up and eventually passed out. He woke up in a cave, wrapped in a quilt next to a fire built by a shepherd who had found him and carried him to safety.
风越来越强，他滑倒了十几次，直到再也无法站起来，最终昏迷过去。他醒来时发现自己在一个山洞里，裹着被子，旁边生了火，原来一位牧羊人发现了他，把他背到安全的地方。
“I owe him my life,” Mr. Zhang wrote.
“再生之恩，永生难忘！！！”张小涛写道。
Local government officials who organized the ultramarathon at the Yellow River Stone Forest Park said that the tragedy had been caused by a sudden and unpredictable change in the weather that occurred a few hours into the race when runners were climbing 6,500 feet above sea level to the 12-mile mark.
组织黄河石林公园超级马拉松的地方政府官员说，这场悲剧是由于比赛开始后几小时发生了无法预测的天气突变，当时选手在海拔2000米的高度跑至20公里标记处。
Stories of runners stranded with no cellphone reception and ill equipped for hail and strong winds have gripped Chinese headlines since Saturday.
自周六以来，没有冰雹和强风防御装备、找不到手机信号的选手们被困的报道占据了中国媒体头条。
By Sunday evening, the higher provincial government in Gansu, a northwestern province, had set up a team to investigate the deaths. Some state news media have raised questions about the decision not to cancel the race and what could have been done to prevent the loss of life. Zhang Xuchen, the mayor of the nearby city of Baiyin who had fired the starting pistol, apologized on national television and bowed as he expressed his sorrow for those who had died.
到周日晚间，西北省份甘肃省政府已经成立了一个小组调查死亡原因。一些官方新闻媒体对不取消比赛的决定提出质疑，以及本应采取何种措施来防止人员伤亡。为比赛打响了发令枪的是附近白银市市长张旭晨，他在国家电视台上鞠躬道歉，向遇难者表示哀悼。
Mr. Zhang could easily have been one of them.
张小涛本来很可能成为其中之一。
Shortly before he began to stumble up the mountain, Mr. Zhang overtook Huang Guanjun, the champion of the men’s marathon for hearing-impaired runners at the 2019 Chinese National Paralympic Games. As Mr. Zhang was passing, Mr. Huang pointed to his ear and waved to indicate he could not hear Mr. Zhang.
在开始跌跌撞撞上山前不久，张小涛超过了黄关军。后者是2019年全国残运会男子马拉松比赛听力障碍组冠军。张小涛路过时，黄关军指着他的耳朵，挥手示意他听不到张小涛的声音。
“Later I found out that he was deaf and mute,” Mr. Zhang wrote. Mr. Huang died on the same mountain pass not long after the encounter.
“后来我才知道他是聋哑人，”张小涛写道。他们相遇后不久，黄关军死在了那个山口。
The race at Yellow River Stone Forest Park was popular with extreme athletes for whom running the length of more than two marathons can be a monthly event.
在黄河石林国家地质公园举行的这场比赛很受极限运动员的欢迎，对于其中一些人来说，几乎每个月都会跑这种超过两个常规马拉松距离的比赛。
But the deaths, by far the most to occur during a single race, highlight the persistent danger that ultrarunning poses, even to veterans of the sport, which attracts thousands of newcomers each year.
但这是迄今为止一场比赛中死亡人数最多的一次，它凸显了超级马拉松始终存在的危险，即便对该运动的老手来说也是如此。超级马拉松每年吸引着成千上万的新人参加。
At the same time, as ultrarunning and trail racing has gained popularity during the past two decades, leaders of the sport have continued to up the ante, putting on increasingly difficult and longer races, many continuing for several days and hundreds of miles and including both high-altitude climbs and extreme temperatures. Critics have argued that some races have begun to blur the line between the rugged and the reckless.
同时，随着超马和越野赛在过去20年越来越受欢迎，这项运动的佼佼者们继续加大赌注，参加越来越艰苦和距离更长的比赛，许多比赛持续数日，长及几百英里，还包括高海拔攀登和极端温度。批评者认为，某些比赛已经开始模糊坚毅和鲁莽的界线。
The race Saturday had been organized by the local government for the past four years and was seen as a way to promote tourism in the area, one of China’s poorest provinces.
周六的那场比赛，在过去四年里一直由地方政府组织，它被视为促进该地区旅游业的一种方式，当地是中国最贫穷的省份之一。
Competitors are usually mountaineers, ultramarathon runners and trail runners, many of whom are motivated by the prize money as well as the glory. The award for the Yellow River Stone Forest Park race was around $2,300, according to the event’s social media account.
选手通常是登山者、超马运动员和越野跑运动员，其中许多人受到奖金和荣誉的驱动。根据该赛事的社交媒体帐户，黄河石林森林公园竞赛的奖金为1.5万元人民币。
Yun Yanqiao, a respected Chinese trail runner, did not compete in the race on Saturday but lost two friends, Huang Yinbin, 28, and Liang Jing, 31, an ultramarathon champion. For Mr. Huang and Mr. Liang, running ultramarathons was as much about the sport as it was about the monetary award, Mr. Yun said. Neither Mr. Liang nor Mr. Huang came from wealthy backgrounds.
受人尊敬的中国越野跑选手运艳桥没有参加周六的比赛，但失去了两个朋友，分别是28岁的黄印斌和31岁的超马冠军梁晶。运艳桥说，对于黄印斌和梁晶来说，参加超马是出于对这项运动的热爱，也是为了奖金。梁晶和黄印斌都不富有。
Mr. Yun said he believed that Mr. Liang ran the race for his wife and young child as well as for his passion. “He was someone who always worked really hard at training and at racing,” Mr. Yun said. “He was someone who cared for his family a lot.”
运艳桥说，他相信梁晶参赛是为自己的妻儿以及他对这项运动的热爱。“他是那种训练的时候特别刻苦的人，比赛的时候也特别刻苦，”运艳桥说。“他是一个特别顾家的人。”
Another survivor, the well-known Chinese mountaineer Luo Jing, described her experience to the state broadcaster CCTV. As she and other runners began the steep ascent and the air thinned with the high altitude, she said, she noticed more and more runners stopping on the side of the road, trembling from the cold.
另一位幸存者，中国著名的登山运动员罗静向中央电视台讲述了她的经历。她说，当她和其他选手开始攀爬陡峭的山坡，空气随着海拔的升高变得稀薄时，她注意到越来越多的选手在路边停下来，因寒冷而发抖。
“They said it was too cold on the mountain, and they all wore shirts and shorts,” Ms. Luo told CCTV. “Someone told us: Go down the mountain, some people are already foaming at the mouth.”
“他们说山上太冷了，他们都穿着短衣短裤，”罗静告诉中央电视台。“有人告诉我们：赶紧下撤吧，有人都口吐白沫了。”
Ms. Luo posted a short video on her way down the mountain on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform.
罗静在下山的过程中，在中国社交媒体平台微博上发布了一段简短的视频。
“I’m going back now, I’m safe,” Ms. Luo says in the video as the wind batters her phone and the waves of freezing rain obscure the background.
视频中充斥着呼啸的风声，阵阵冰雨模糊了背景，罗静在视频中说：“我现在往回撤，我很安全。”
