Competitors in last year's OMM

Competitors in last year's OMM

Organisers of a mountain marathon have warned would-be competitors some of their details may have been lost in an IT incident.

An external technology provider for the Original Mountain Marathon suffered a major hardware failure in its data storage unit in May.

OMM managing director Tom Williams said: “This has affected all areas of OMM from websites to essential business functions such as accounts and some competitor data.

“We can reassure you there has been no breach of security and we still hold all the data but corruption makes it unusable. The hardware failure also affected our recent backup copies.

“As you can imagine this has been heartbreaking for all of us here at OMM. We apologise for the disruption this has caused, we know many of you are trying to enter this year’s races but we can assure you that there isn’t much sleep happening here for the moment.

“At present we are working with our new IT provider to rebuild our systems and data for the first part of 2017.”

The organisers said they need the help of those who have submitted entries for upcoming events.

Mr Williams said: “Firstly, if you have entered the 50th anniversary OMM already then we may now be missing some of your details.

“We have compiled a list of those who have entered and we will be contacting you shortly via email to ask you to re-enter some aspects of your information. If you have any concerns that these emails are coming for us then please contact [OMM] and we will verify.

“Secondly, this disruption has prevented entries for the OMM Lite in the Surrey Hills and also our new Ultra partner race with Lurbel at a normally critical period of entries. The event team have everything ready to go and it should be a great summer race.

“We are reducing the price to the early entry price and we would really appreciate it if you would consider coming along and supporting us. The senior team of OMM will be in attendance and will be open to discuss all matters OMM including this IT problem and the lessons we have learnt along the way.”

Anyone who entered an upcoming event before 2 May 2017 is asked to fill in their details on the OMM website. The site also has details of the OMM Lite and Lurbel Ultra.