Contenders For The Darwin Awards?

[lankeela]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-56087935

[ichkeria]

I thought the Darwin awards "honoured" people who meet their end in spectacularly embarrassing fashion

[Old_Geezer]

No, they just have to take their genes out of the gene pool due to their own foolishness.

[Old_Geezer]

Since they were rescued, they aren't eligible.

[emmie]

not quite for the Darwin Awards...

[Ken4155]

No doubt they'll be back on the ice once it freezes over again :-((

[tiggerblue10]

The freezing gene pool is very much alive.

[emmie]

not something one should be doing. doesn't ever seem safe to me..

[Peter Pedant]

no there is a big cultural thing about this
various things

twenty years ago - ALL the dutch stood and watched whilst a non swimmer drowned in a gracht (*) Everyone thought the boat people wd come and they didnt and the fella went under. National whoopsie on the level of Grenfell - or Hungerford or Lawrence. So THIS is different

canals freeze over but is it more often than in the mini-Ice Age ( ding ding ends 1 Jan 1500) - anyway they freeze and you can skte on them as one does
and even race on them - the glichten-glochten-gloo is a canal race on the ice (+) which has been run on canals when they freeze since 1425. wooden skates - and is one oof the few races which have lasted that long, so you can vaguely compare perfomances of modern athletes with those of the middle ages ( cool huh ?) - so skating on canals is not Darwin stuff but has been done for ages. Oh and they held it this year. west frisians win it a lot

elf steden tocht - 11-staat(city) race

(*) dutch word - dont worry - it has water in it which is the impt thing
(+) The Elfstedentocht West Frisian: Alvestêdetocht [ɔlvəˈstɛːdətɔχt], ) is a long-distance tour skating event on natural ice, almost 200 kilometres (120 mi) long, which is held both as a speed skating competition (with 300 contestants) and

[Sunk]

I should imagine ice skaters have been falling through melting ice for the last 4000 years that man has been ice skating.

[lankeela]

But Peter surely they check the ice before allowing them to race on it - these muppets just went on in their ordinary clothes with no safety checks or protection.

[wolf63]

It seems that 90% of the Darwin award contestants are male.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards

[Mamyalynne]

Were ,Wolf ;-)

[Cloverjo]

When I saw the photo of people skating on the canal earlier I thought it didn’t look at all safe. It wasn’t frozen at the edges.

I’m glad everyone got out ok, but how daft!

[wolf63]

Mamya - Yep. Unless they qualify by rendering themselves unable to breed.

[ummmm]

Twice our mate has fell into a canal in Amsterdam. Off their heads on drugs. The second time he was taken to hospital and they got his details from his passport and phoned his parents...

It made me laugh....

He survived :-D