Female runner pulled from race due to death threats

Why the coyness from posters on this thread? Why the faux innocence about ‘what sort of men would do this?’ ‘Who are these men?’

And why the reference to ‘men’ in general.

We all know which men and why. They are Islamists. It’s those men. Those are the men who behead people and threaten to behead people. Why are posters pretending they don’t know this? It’s Islamists who don’t want women and girls educated. Why are you pretending you don’t know this?

You know from fighting gender ideology, the importance of being able to name a problem to tackle it. Why are you refusing to name this problem?

In some ways what's happened is a parallel to what is happening to women and girls in Afghanistan, and she will get lots of publicity now I hope. It seems unlikely that whoever pledged 100k if she managed to do it would say 'well I'm going to let the violent men who don't want girls to have human rights or an education win' - I hope at least.

It must be awful to have trained so hard for this to happen and I hope she does get to do it eventually with some other amazing women.

It was too late to do anything for that race, but she may run the route later. In the interview, she said:

"I'll do the spine challenger route on my own when nobody knows about it. And then I'll tell the story afterwards, which is one option."

"Do you know what? I've had a few really amazing female runners - and apparently some of them are really incredible, like they've won races and stuff - who have reached out to me and saying, uh we would do this with you so i'm thinking that could be one route"

I have donated, I am just so appalled that this happened. I can understand why the organisers felt they had no option but to withdraw her after such a graphic threat. Logistically to put in safety measures around her at such short notice would have been impossible. It is a brutal course, and it’s not a high numbers event compared to some events. The amount of training she must have put in, just to have this happen.

That would probably work in some scenarios, but not in the Spine. It’s about as difficult a race as it’s possible to imagine. Very few people would have both the skills to do that (even in shorter sections) AND to protect someone from extreme violence.

Really good interview! If the link above doesn't work (it says it's a private video), try this one: https://runultra.substack.com/p/sarah-porter

Can a group of people not take turns to run along side her as extra protection to try to keep her safe and keep her in the race. I think this is an occasion other men need to step up and say 'we're not having it'.

The podcast also talks about the safety issues of these races and their trackers for women solo and often overnight in isolated locations. Location being broadcast publicly over the internet. Like the Strava effect. Sounds fabulous and works great on social media but actually terrible for safeguarding

On the Telegraph page theres a link to a running podcast where she talks about (mostly running) but also her situation. From about 14-15 mins in she talks about the security issues.

She’s a very brave woman!

She has some technology businesses which led her to work with women and girls in low to middle income countries including Afghanistan. As a result of this work she has a permanent body guard, security advisers s as be a security dog! She has received threats for many years so entered the race with all this having been discussed with organisers.

Security services were/are aware and investigating - but she said mostly the threats are idle. It’s just that the threats to behead her during the race was all new and risky for the race organisers. At first they switched off her tracker so that no one could gps locate her via the web and when she got to a checkpoint they told her she had to withdraw. That was 6 hours in.

She chose to run in her own name and had sponsors following her progress. They were raising money to build a girls school and £100k was contingent on her finishing the race. Many sponsors (some in The Middle East) had organised watching parties to follow her progress live via her race tracker on the internet.

They had discussed pseudonyms but she decided that would have reduced her awareness raising. In the podcast she said more people needed to know what was happening to women and girls in the world. In Afghanistan girls are sold off to Talibam fighters as young as 7 and are pregnant by 9.

I know it’s bad she didn’t get to finish but I hope the shocking nature of these threats results in someone being brought to justice for this. And that she gets far wider publicity than she ever otherwise would.

What sort of men (because I think im 95% vertex it will be) threaten a woman for helping stop the rape, slavery and trafficking of young women. What’s wrong with these people?

I hope those who threatened this amazing woman get what they deserve.
Clearly they are misogynistic nasty men who think violence to women, even killing them, is absolutely ok.
What the hell goes through their vile minds. Absolute monsters.
I am so angry.
Best thing I can do is donate today and metaphorically put 2 fingers up to the bastards.

I'm so glad this is finally getting some attention. My aunty knows and runs with this lady. The threats were specific and a very real risk, purely because a woman is trying to raise money for a cause that she believes in?! What kind of world are we living in. So much training effort and organisation takes place for these ultra marathons and it was just taken away due to others actions. It's disgusting.

Presumably since she was running for women and girls in Afghanistan, the men threatening her are those who don't believe women and girls should have human rights and anyone highlighting the human rights abuses against women and girls in Afghanistan is therefore a target?

I hope the police do something to actually arrest and charge them. It is very frightening if they're allowed to get away with it.

Archive here:

https://archive.is/0BJ7o

For future ref - if you copy-paste the original article url into the archive.is website, you can either find archive versions or archive a version yourself (depending on where you paste the url - there are two options).

I think there might be clues in the shape of the cause she was funding.

As @Erin1975 says it's not any old street marathon, it's a very long distance cross country multi hour (multi? Day event) with the runners out in the back of beyond but with their position visible on-line to pretty much anyone who cared to look at the appropriate website(s).

This part is baffling me. There must be some details they are not releasing to the press. A woman running a marathon for charity is hardly controversial. Why was she singled out in this way?

They have some pretty specific threats to her life. What other option do they have though? The race passes through pretty remote parts of the UK. It's not like they can have a car follow her or some police officers accompany her.

🙏 will someone with acces please archive? 💐

I wonder who "They" are, the ones threatening her?

I don’t understand. Did the threats start when the tracker was disabled? Was the tracker disabled as part of the intimidation?

What the fuck is wrong with these men?

So men cause the problem and the solution is to punish the woman by banning her from racing. Wow.

Wow she is incredible!

Good for her

That's awful. There's a link to the go fund me at the bottom of the Telegraph article.

That’s awful. FFS.

As modern day curses go, this is fairly genius.

Jesus wept. I hope every bloke, & it will be blokes, making those threats gets treatment-resistant Fournier's gangrene.