Updated: ATM 2023 opens with UTKC on 21 January

[This is an update of an earlier post published on 6 october]

Season VII of the Asia Trail Master Championship series is currently in full swing and the tension towards the winner-takes-all Final race between qualified runners in national country teams has been building up gradually. Nevertheless, the start of the new Season VIII is not that far away neither. As usual, there’s five weeks between the end and the beginning. The ATM event calendar for 2023 is taking shape, not as fast as we would like but it seems the nature of today’s world to have a shorter horizon to work with. In fact, several event organisers are still waiting for official permits by their local or regional authorities. In total, the ATM Championship calendar will again feature between 25 and maximum 30 points races in which runners can score points for the Championship qualification and/or for their Grandmaster Quest. The complete calendar is building up gradually, and we are happy to confirm two more points races in the earlier part of the season.

The new season will begin with four weekends-in-a-row. Thailand has the honour of having the opener with the classic Ultra Trail Koh Chang - UTKC - event in the south of the country and reachable via Bangkok, on the weekend of 21-22 January 2023. As usual, both the 100km and the 70km race categories will offer ATM points. One week later we move to Bandung in West Java, Indonesia, for Tahura Trail. Another classic and very popular for trail runners who prefer a shorter race distance (42 km) or for those wishing to prep themselves for longer races afterwards. Going into February, we find the V Trail in Laos on the schedule. A new date in the early season for the tough and technical race of 85km around Vang Vieng in the south of the country. From Laos we will head to Manila for the first Filipino race of the 2023 season and it’s a new entry on our Championship calendar: Santa Ines Mountain Adventure. A pretty spicy 80km in the Rizal mountains east of the Manila metropole, a successful Candidate Race last April.

After this quartet of events, we will have a break for two weeks until the new Candidate Race in Brunei, the Simpur Ultra Run on 25 February. Looking into early March, Dalat Ultra Trail will be the first Vietnamese event on the calendar on the first weekend of March. Dalat is a very popular destination for trail runners in the country, but also for South East Asians in general as the climatic conditions are favourable. After Dalat, we are rapidly approaching fasting month, which typically implies a more quiet period on the event calendar. A note on BUTM in Malaysia, the event will be announced in due course, and is set for a complete redesign AFTER the fasting month. A second Vietnamese event is set to enter the series in April. Confirmed for early May is the second Filipino races of the 2023 season: Sierra Madre Trail Ultra 75. A Candidate Race in 2022, this event caters for elite runners in particular and takes place in another area of the Rizal Mountains east of Manila. Later in May, we can also expect the first Malaysian points race of the season as well as the quite special Bukit Lawang Orang Utan Trail in North Sumatra, Indonesia.

Stay tuned for more updates on the 2023 ATM Calendar coming very soon.