Here’s our second brief news round-up as the global covid 19 pandemic continues to restrict travel and event organisation opportunities. It is now exactly one year since the last international points race for the Asia Trail Master Championship. That was UTKC, aka Ultra Trail Koh Chang, in Thailand. A year ago, Fredelyn Alberto looked stronger than ever in winning the women’s tough 100k race, and a weakened Hisashi Kitamura, due to sickness, had to content himself with third place behind the surprisingly strong Filipino Arnie Macaneras and last-minute winner Paul Dunn. Ryan Whelan won the 70K for men, and Elviemma Catabay completed the Filipino success in Thailand that day by taking victory in the women’s 70km. UTKC saw some unexpected and amazing runs by people who had been working hard for months to reach that level of performance. Hopefully, these runners have not given up during the pandemic and will harvest more fruit from their training labour as soon as competition resumes.

In the Philippines, sadly, this may take still several months. This week, Philip Anthony of the MUSPO event at Lake Apo on MIndanao informed us they have not received the permission from the authorities to hold the scheduled event this July. Rather than postponing by a few months and see what happens, the organisation has decided to shift focus immediately towards 2022. MUSPO is sponsored by HOKA ONE ONE and is an eagerly anticipated young event with a 100k that shows a good balance between runable and technical terrain.

A formal decision on the Negros Oriental event set in early June, Puncak Tanawan Mountain Run, is expected within the next two weeks. The other two Filipino events on the ATM Calendar, Cordillera Mountain Ultra and The Punisher are scheduled back-to-back at the end of this year.

In Malaysia, the new Candidate Race Jagoi Heritage Run in Sarawak has been postponed. Originally set for April, the 50k event will now take place on the first weekend of November. Another Candidate Race, the Bali Volcano Race - which offers a stage race and individual race categories - is back on the programme for the second weekend of December.

Theoretically speaking, the first points race event on the calendar remains Korea 50k on 22/23 May.

Paul Dunn, Arnie Macaneras and Hisashi Kitamura. A fantastic podium at UTKC 100 now one year ago

Elviemma and Fredelyn: Filipinos dominated the women’s 100k and 70k races at UTKC

Ryan Whelan scored his maiden ATM points race victory on the 70k at UTKC last year

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As Tahura Trail in Indonesia got cancelled at the very last moment, we are once again looking at a draught of real trail running events with for the foreseeable future. Our 2021 intended event calendar, released early December 2020, had already anticipated this renewed situation as the global covid 19 pandemic is still raging. The calendar has a clear focus on the second semester, and as such nothing much has been changing in the past couple of months. However, there’s always a bit of news and we will be posting a weekly or bi-weekly round-up going forward.

Korea 50K moves to 22/23 May 2021

With Tahura Trail called off at the last minute, the next real race on the ATM Calendar is Korea 50k. Normally taking place towards the end of April, the organisational team decided earlier this week to create a bit more breathing space and move it back by one month to 22 and 23 May. Still, the covid 19 situation is not over in South Korea neither, and a final decision whether the event can happen will be discussed again with the authorities of Dongducheon City at the end of this month. It goes almost without saying that in any case it will be an event with domestic residents-only, as there is no expectation of an open border by then.

MMTF in Malaysia opens registration

As in 2019, the last race in the Asia Trail Master Championship series this year will be the Malaysia Mountain Trail Festival in Taiping, Malaysia on 18 December. The ATM Final will have a new race venue in the city, Esplanade, and offers several race categories of which the 84 km is of course the main one for the Championship contenders. The event has opened regular registration this week, so if you want to be already certain of your spot in the participants’ list, you can sign up here.

Echigo opens registration and a new website

Yuta Matsuyama of Team Uglow Asia is the new race director of Echigo Country Trail and he has been freshening up and redesigning several aspects of the Japanese event, which has been part of the Asia Trail Master Championship series since 2016. The event takes place in Nagaoka in Niigata, roughly 2 hours northwest from Tokyo by shinkansen but there’s also a few international flights going there directly - in a normal world. The main race is 60 km long now with 2350 metres of elevation and if you are in Japan, you can sign up now. Have a look at the great new website as well.

Two A-races per event in Thailand

In Thailand there is a tendency to introduce mega ultra distance races to the trail event programmes, which creates the option for having more than 1 so-called A-race for ATM Championship points. As was already the case at Ultra Trail Chiang Rai in previous years, also at Doi Nhok Trail, Samui Monkeys Trail and Ultra Trail Chiang Mai, runners can choose between the 100 miles (or longer) or the medium distance category and earn a full haul of points for their performances. The only difference is that finishers on the 100 miles or longer get the traditional “100-Miles Bonus” of 25 points as well.