Stephen Bowesview more articlesYou may well assume the people in the picture are close friends, brother and sister, or a married couple? Well they are in fact complete strangers.
This is one of thousand images taken from last week’s Tough Guy event in Wolverhampton.
As the post race pictures were published, the lady in the photo, Kerrie Fisher recalled the moment it was captured. The sport coach from Kent had seen the man struggling to complete the brutal course with only 1km left. She spotted him staggering and shivering so gave him her jacket, ear warmers and hat hugging him all the way to the finish to keep him warm. Once over the line, the strangers went their separate ways.
However, when Kerrie shared the photo on Facebook, the members of the community Facebook OCR UK group started a campaign to find the mystery man and Kerrie earned the nick-name, the ‘OCR Guardian Angel’. Her search went viral on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and some even changed their profile pictures in the hope it would be seen by someone with some knowledge. For 48 hours, the man’s identity was still unknown. But persistence paid off and eventually Conor O’Bryne, a German resident was named as the man whom Kerrie assisted. Conor has now recovered from Tough Guy, and Kerrie hopes that they can meet up in warmer conditions.
We’re all familiar with the terms OCR community and OCR family. Here it is working at its best. Team work, making friends in the mud, using social media in a positive way. So next time you’re using social media, reach out, follow your favourite race or even make a new friend like Kerrie.
Thanks to MyBibNumber for the image.
