COLUMN
Meet the runner who made the finish line of the Tor des Géants despite blacking out twice due to a snake bite
A member of the Surrey-based Dorking & Mole Valley Athletics Club, Hideo was raised in Japan and moved to Britain in the 1970s. A veteran of the planet’s most gruelling ultras, he is perhaps best known for receiving the Spirit of Comrades award after his selfless actions in the 2017 Comrades Marathon.
The last thing you need after six days in the mountains in one of the world’s toughest ultras with the finish almost in sight is to be bitten by a snake. That’s what happened to Surrey runner Hideo Takano at the Tor des Géants race in Italy last autumn – but he struggled to the finish line.
The 55-year-old was approaching Courmayeur, the end point for the 330km race with 24,000m of elevation. Coming down off the mountains for the last time with just 2km to go, he felt a stabbing pain in his ankle and knew it was more than an insect sting.
“My first thought was, ‘is it going to be quicker for me to go to the doctor or a doctor to come to me?’” he says. “We were still on the trails and it was a bit uphill and I was so close to the finish. I thought I may as well get to the finish and get treated.”
For about a kilometre, the pain of the bite itself was the only issue, but then suddenly his lips and tongue started to swell. Then, back in the town and about 500m from the end, he suffered a blackout.
After receiving some attention from onlookers, Hideo got up and continued but then blacked out again. This time when he woke there was a doctor giving him the option of either receiving on-the-spot treatment or being seen to after he crossed the line.
He recalls: “To me it wasn’t much of a choice after I’d been going for six days. I’m not going to just give it up within sight of the finish and, if the doctor’s giving me that choice, obviously it’s not life-threatening.”
He was propped up by helpers either side to complete the race and then bundled barely conscious into an ambulance and taken by air to hospital. The last kilometre had taken him around 20 minutes. He was not disqualified – he thinks because the assistance came via official race volunteers.
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