About Us
We believe in best-practice event medicine so that event organizers can deliver their events safely and with confidence. Best practice event medicine involves:
Mitigating or treating the issues that event organizers worry about (serious injury or illness)
Managing the issues that participants are concerned about (uncomfortable or potentially race-ending illness or injuries)
Minimizing the impact of your event on local statutory healthcare and rescue resources.
Shelter Stone arose from the desire to provide gold-standard, robust, appropriate and evidence-based Event Medical and Safety cover.
A combination of data analysis (from past or similar events), our extensive experience, and your event ethos allows us to position the right clinicians, with the right medications and equipment, with access to experienced clinical oversight, such that we mitigate the impact of your event on local resources including urgent treatment centers, A&Es, ambulance trusts, and mountain rescue teams. This is a crucial step for fulfilling an event organiser's obligations as defined in best practice guidance described in the Purple Guide.
Where we need to call on support from such resources, Shelter Stone can provide interoperability with the emergency services to minimize duplication of assets or assessments and ensure the smoothest possible pathway for the participant involved. Our team also integrates with your event management team and/or volunteers, minimizing the potential errors which naturally arise from human factors or communication issues and ensuring you have the oversight you need for decision-making at your event.
The team at Shelter Stone have blended excellence in event operations and event medicine whilst building sustainable and integrated relationships with the event organisers we support.
Dr Natalya Kennedy
Medical Director
Never quite as good as her friends at hockey or rowing and with a 2.1 in modern history, Natalya got a medical degree to help her compensate. In med school she also found that she was not quite as good as her friends at climbing, mountain biking and fell running. Lured into running the Dragon's Back Race in 2019 she discovered, first hand and somewhat painfully, how not to prepare or perform for a challenge of that scale.
A job on the Response Team later that year allowed her to help others whose races weren't quite going to plan. Since then she's been distilling the hard-earned lessons of those who are suffering to improve others' outcomes as Medical Director for trail & fell running events of all shapes and sizes.
When the blisters or vomit in the med tent get a bit much she also moonlights in Race Control, works as a GP in urgent treatment centres and some of the remoter parts of Scotland, and has also been an operational member of her local Mountain Rescue team for over 5 years.
Shane Ohly
Event Director
Shane has a background working freelance on some of the most significant adventure sports events. Since starting Ourea Events in 2011, he has been Race or Event Director at numerous world-class events that inspire participants to take on challenging and life-affirming adventures in the most remote and exposed mountainous terrain in the UK. He draws further experience from many years as a senior Mountain Rescue Team member.
Shane is fascinated with risk management in adventure sports and has not been afraid to push the boundaries of what is achievable with events like the Glen Coe Skyline®.
Shane is also a well-known mountain runner, multiple mountain marathon champion, and esoteric FKT record holder.