What is the Asia Trail Master Championship series?

Asia Trail Master is an internationally acknowledged series of trail running races in Asia managed by Kuai Sports Promotions Ltd. in Hong Kong. It features an annual championship based on a transparent points system for competitive runners, but also puts emphasis on runners of all levels via the Grandmaster Quest, a special achievement award for persistent long distance finishers. Each season ends with the “ATM Final”, where the new champions are crowned in a winner-takes-all race amongst qualified runners in national country teams.

The core objective of the Asia Trail Master series is fourfold:

  • To promote a healthy lifestyle and boost environmental consciousness among international citizens through the sport of trail running.

  • To create a community platform and bring people from various distinct countries, cultures and backgrounds together.

  • To provide trail running event organisers with a new and outsourced platform to boost international promotion and mediatisation of their events, including live race coverage, as well as assist organisers with their business networking and event-technical needs.

  • To provide Asian trail runners with a great performance goal, be it to become a Grandmaster or the year's Asia Trail Master champion, both of which may result in rewards and sponsorship endorsements

Marking its eleventh season from October 2025 to October 2026, the Asia Trail Master championship series has, in total, approx 30 races in 13 Asian countries that offer ATM points to the top 25 male and female runners . Some of the major races include Borneo TMBT Ultra in Malaysia, Izu Trail Journey in Japan, Vietnam Trail Marathon in Vietnam, Bali BTRl in Indonesia, Lantau 70 and The 9 Dragons in Hong Kong, and many more.

The Asia Trail Master Champions over the past years were:

  • 2015: Arief Wismoyono (Indonesia) and Ma Yanxing (China)

  • 2016: Manolito Divina (Philippines) and Tahira Najmunisaa Muhammad Zaid (Malaysia)

  • 2017: Soonseng Ong (Malaysia) and Kim Matthews (Australia)

  • 2018: Alessandro Sherpa (Italy) and Ruth Theresia (Indonesia)

  • 2019: John Ellis (Australia) and Veronika Vadovicova (Slovakia)

  • 2022: Arnie Macaneras (Philippines) and Hau Ha (Vietnam)

  • 2023: John Ray Onifa (Philippines) and Rashila Tamang (Nepal)

  • 2024: Jeff Campbell (Hong Kong) and Priya Rai (Nepal)

ATM intro one-pager (PDF)

Three kinds of ATM races

  • ATM Championship Qualifier

  • ATM Grandmaster Quest Race

  • ATM Candidate Race

ATM Championship qualifier events are events that have one or two races on their programme that offer points to the Top 25 in the race results for the ATM Championship ranking, which leads to potential qualification for the ATM Championship Final at the end of the season (typically between mid-September and mid-October).

ATM Grandmaster Quest events have one or more distance categories on their programme that offer registered runners a point for their individual Grandmaster Quest challenge.

  • NOTE: Each Championship qualifier race of 70km or longer is automatically also valid for the Grandmaster Quest. In other words, events can feature on both Championship and Grandmaster calendars.

ATM Candidate Race is an event that is new or organised/managed by a new team. Candidate Races offer no points and are essentially a ‘discovery’ or ‘test race’ for potential inclusion in the Championship and Grandmaster Quest calendars in the future