Duan Jihong
Duan Jihong, 58, had served as a first aid runner for the 100km trail run for two consecutive years.
On 2 October 2020, on the 100km course of the Wumeng Mountain Supercross, he set off from the start with the athletes at 9am and arrived at the finish line early on the morning of the 3rd. Throughout the race, Duan Jihong provided assistance to a number of participants who had suffered arm falls, leg cramps and stomach upsets, and also took care of places where the layout markers were damaged and ill laid out on the way.
At the beginning of May this year, ten days before he was killed, he appeared again at the Wumeng Mountain Supercross, where the southern weather was hot and some athletes suffered from heatstroke, water and salt loss and leg cramps, and others suffered from high altitude reflexes on the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau, and Duan Jihong observed more than 20 athletes before and after.
He recorded these first aid procedures in his Wechat Moments, saying that he was proud of his volunteer service and that "he was also very rewarding". But his daughter Duan Duan (a pseudonym) is now even more upset to see this, "I believe my dad has some ability to save himself. Why would it be him?" She recorded on Weibo that her father had also called 110 at 10.30pm on May 22, with a call lasting 46 seconds. "I can't imagine how he got through those difficult 9+ hours alone, he was so cold, so cold. He must have gone to the rescue, he had experience in 100km first aid runs, he couldn't even be bothered to put his own knee pads on."
On the morning of May 24, she met her father, "he just seemed to be asleep, and how his mother shouted could not shout at him." Duan recalled that her father was a very filial person and would talk to her grandmother for over an hour every time she returned from a running race. But now Grandma can't wait for the phone call to inform her of her safety. She is 85 years old and has been in poor health, which the whole family has hide this from her so far.
In her niece's recollections, her uncle is a man with the spirit of a thunderbolt, low-key and hard-working, who has struggled all her life, still studying every day in her 50s, and especially enjoying marathons in general. She was the last person in the family to know the news, apart from the 85-year-old, "I didn't react, in a trance, how could someone so so good leave us?"
Looking through Duan Duan's Weibo feed, one can see the tiny details of the ordinary yet happy family's life over the past ten years. When Mum celebrated her birthday, her father, who was away from home, would call and "pathetically say that he should be included in tonight's birthday"; when he went on a business trip, Dad would bring back a small gift, and over the course of the semester, small items would be spread all over the table.
In Duan's account, they got along like friends; her father would write her postcards and send her a QQ wishing her happy holidays on Children's Day, and the girl showed screenshots, "Daddy is so cute" ...... Then after that, the social network documented a girl working, falling in love, and moving step by step from her family into the bigger world.
Just a short time ago, Duan Duan began planning her wedding, but on that dreamed of the day, there will be no father ever again who is able to hold her hand and walk into the ceremony hall.