Terror in the Water

By AmyJo Brown
Staff Writer

July 2002

t was 5:30 a.m., June 7, and Curt Bramble maneuvered his boat into Utah Lake, a 6-foot-deep freshwater lake outside Provo. Bramble, a volunteer at the Ironman Utah triathlon, was heading out with a race official to set marker buoys for the first portion of the race. It was scheduled to start at 7 a.m.

“The winds were pretty brisk across the lake,” Bramble said. “Generally, it’s glass at that time in the morning.”

He took note of the wind coming from the west and, as a 30-year Provo resident, grew concerned. When there’s a western wind, he said, the normally benign Utah Lake changes its complexion — like Dr. Jekyll turning into Mr. Hyde.

“I suggested to the official that the race be cancelled,” Bramble said. The official said the athletes were used to rough conditions.

“I don’t think he understood how dangerous those conditions were,” Bramble said. “The winds roll across the lake, building wave action. Because it is a shallow lake, it becomes much more dangerous.”

The wind eventually would reach 50 mph, pummeling swimmers with 6- to 8-foot waves and spreading them out across the lake, some drifting a mile off course. Later, Bramble would pull John Boland’s body from the water.

Boland, a veteran Ironman competitor in his 50s who had competed in six previous triathlons, drowned just 10 to 15 minutes into the race, according to the Utah County Sheriff’s department.

His death has turned a national spotlight on the event and its organizers. Numerous people, such as Bramble, say the race never should have started. Some of the swimmers, even those much younger than Boland, recounted the scary conditions and the frantic circumstances they endured in the water, trying desperately to get to safety. No one else was seriously hurt, and the triathlon continued with the cycling and running portions of the event for the 1,500-plus athletes.

By 6:30 a.m., after expressing his concerns about the weather, Bramble was on his way back to the harbor to drop off the official. He was waved down by another, smaller boat. The pilot was fighting to keep the waves from swamping his boat and asked Bramble if he could take one of the passengers.

A little before 7 a.m., Bramble was back out on the lake.

“I saw lifeguards on kayaks having a difficult time staying on the racecourse because of the waves,” he said.

Meanwhile, at the race’s starting pen, the worsening weather had many of the competitors apprehensive about beginning the race. They were ordered into the water several times by Ironman officials. Afraid of being disqualified, many got in.

“A lot of people were just standing on the dock, staring out and watching the waves,” said Mike Stilton, 41, a competitor from Huntington Beach, Calif. “A guy was yelling at them to get in the water and they weren’t. That’s not usual. Everyone is usually in the water warming up.”

Conditions at 6:30 a.m. were “swimmable,” said Grahm Fraser, president of Ironman North America, in a statement posted on the organization’s Web site. “We had to get the athletes into the water to make sure that the race started on time.”

The cannon that signaled the start of the race, however, went off six to seven minutes early because athletes prematurely began to swim, Fraser said. Within 10 minutes, the front hit and conditions worsened considerably, he said.

Out in the water, Stilton said, waves slammed swimmers over and over, and the 6-foot buoys Bramble had set earlier to guide racers through the 2.4-mile course were being blown away.

“There was nothing past the first buoy; you just swam into oblivion,” he said. “The waves were getting so high, I thought, ‘This really [stinks]. You can’t go anywhere.’ ”

Gilbert Mancilla, 31, of Phoenix told the Los Angeles Times, “The waves were coming so suddenly at me that every time I came up to breathe, I had a mouth full of water. It wasn’t long into the race, only about 500 meters, before I was telling myself, ‘This is too much for me.’ ”

Bramble, out on his 26-foot boat with his daughter and several other passengers, saw a swimmer yelling for help. He was pulled on board. Only a few minutes later, Bramble noticed a swimmer floating face down in the water.

“I thought he was resting, but when I reached for him, his wetsuit slipped and he went under the boat.”

Diving into the turbulent water, Bramble found the swimmer (Boland) and pulled him back to the boat, where his daughter and another passenger began CPR. A nearby swimmer, who turned out to be a doctor, swam over to help. Bramble radioed a mayday and ran his boat into the harbor, where paramedics waited.

On his way in, Bramble had noticed other swimmers in distress and, after dropping off Boland, went out again to help.

According to Ironman President Fraser, it was shortly after the race started that the decision came to cancel the event, and boats were sent out to bring the swimmers in.

However, Bramble didn’t realize the magnitude of the situation until he made several trips out, rescuing swimmers too fatigued to continue.

“Some were in such a physical state, they couldn’t even climb onto the boat,” he said. “On the final trip, we had 42 swimmers on board and we were nearly swamping. Swimmers were still in the water asking for help and we couldn’t physically fit anyone else on board.”

Race officials were negligent in not calling off the race earlier, said Bramble, who also is a Utah state senator, but had no official capacity in the event.

Officials didn’t have a lot of time to make the decision, said Fraser, but they acted as quickly as they could. When the swim portion was cancelled, the competition was shortened to a duathlon: no-swim, 65-mile bike, 13.1 mile run.

“We had a crisis and we dealt with it to the best of our ability,” Fraser said.