This has been an incredibly tough and truly devastating decision for us to come to, but we have had to make the call to postpone the 12th edition to Conti Thunder Run to 24th/25th July 2021.
Although there are several weeks left until the planned date for the event it now seems that we will still be under significant restrictions in response to the Covid-19 outbreak. Although we would always do everything in our power to make the event go ahead, this won’t be done at the expense of public health.
With the government’s advice for social distancing and against mass gatherings and non-essential travel we are put into such a difficult position. Even if there is some hope of the restrictions being lifted, partially or wholly, by July there is no guarantees of this and in the meantime self-isolation and working restrictions means it’s near impossible to complete all the necessary preparation work. Although we bring in private medical cover and security for the event, we are ultimately supported by the NHS & emergency services and we should not unnecessarily add to their work load at a time when their efforts need to be focused on the wider public health situation.
As with the majority of the UK events industry we carry a number of insurance policies but none of these cover this eventuality with the Covid-19 outbreak. Thunder Run is quite a big event, but please remember that we are a very small family company (there’s just the three of us!), so having to postpone is absolutely devastating and heart wrenching for us. Pretty much overnight we have been put into a position where we are not allowed to run our business, receiving no revenue this year this whilst we have spent months working on the event and we have already committed a huge amount of money in logistics and other costs which are not recoverable. So far it appears that none of the government’s business support measures apply to our particular situation leaving us facing many more tough days ahead. Put simply, we have been told that we can not run our business for an indeterminate length of time with no support. We cannot put into words what it feels like to have the business that we have worked so hard on forced into this position.
Rest assured we won’t be beaten by this and we will come back in 2021 and with the support of the amazing Thunder Run community we can make the event better than ever. All entry fees will be deferred to the 2021 event and we have extended our refunds policy until 1st June 2021.
