LAist is part of Southern California Public Radio (SCPR), a member-supported public media network. Hear our news on-air at our partner site:
Reporting is not for the faint of heart. Neither are beachside "Ironman" drinking competitions. Combine the two and things can really get messy.
This 4th of July, KTLA reporter Wendy Burch was vomited on during a live newscast from the Hermosa Beach Ironman competition. The video, needless to say, has since gone viral. And to clarify, the Hermosa Beach Ironman competition is not your typical Ironman. The 43-year-old event's motto is “Run, Paddle, Chug!”, and participants run a mile, paddle a mile and then, um, chug a six pack of beer.
"This will be one Fourth of July I will always remember," Burch declared in a column about the incident for the Huffington Post. Here's how it went down at around 9 a.m., according to Burch's post:
I grabbed a guy who appeared to be a spirited competitor, and from the evidence of his beer belly, had been clearly training for this event for years. My hope was that his broad… ah, erh… shoulders, could shield our morning viewers from the ups—and from what wasn’t staying down—in this competition. What I didn’t notice until later, is that he had a bullseye drawn on his back with the words “puke here” written in magic marker. And wouldn’t you know it? Someone took him up on the offer right during the middle of my live report, much to the chagrin, of me, our anchors and anyone in Southern California who may have been eating breakfast at that very moment.
After the "liquid projectile" hit the intrepid reporter, the anchors back at the station struggled to regain their composure and went onto the next story (the freeze frame was due to a technical glitch), but Burch assumed she was still live. For the better part of the next two minutes, as she puts it, "I just kept interviewing drunken people. while sudsy substances flew in in the air and landed in my hair."
Mad props to colleague @goodnewswendy who may have to put in 4 hazard pay after wht happened on live TV🤢 #champ #HermosaBeach #IronMan #KTLA pic.twitter.com/g3A2E4Q1Om
— Christina Pascucci (@ChristinaKTLA) July 4, 2017
Someone, give this woman a Pulitzer. God bless America.