Zhu Keming, a shepherd has been hailed a hero in China after it was known that he saved six marathon runners, who had been affected by extreme weather at the Yellow River Stone Forest near Baiyin city in Gansu province, where they were taking part in an ultra marathon.
Zhu Keming was trending on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform in China. On Sunday, 21 runners lost their lives to hypothermia, after extreme weather hit the marathon course. Keming, a shepherd, had taken refuge in a cave when the weather turned deadly with high winds and hail.
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Four distressed runners who made into the cave, where Keming was sheltering, told him that there were others marooned outside, some of them unconscious. The sporting event that claimed 21 lives had people questioning why the organisers ignored warnings of extreme weather.
Keming stepped out of the cave and braved the freezing temperatures reached a runner who was lying on the ground. He carried the runner into the tent and wrapped him in blankets. "I want to say how grateful I am to the man who saved me," the runner, Zhang Xiaotao, wrote on Weibo.
“The herd uncle should be rewarded with money and the Samaritan Award,” a user wrote on Weibo
Zhu rescued three men and three women in total.
"There were still some people that could not be saved," Keming told AFP. "There were two men who were lifeless and I couldn't do anything for them; I'm sorry, he added. Following the incident, sports authorities in China are ordering competition organisers to improve safety.