Statement on the postponement of ATM-related events
The global corona pandemic is causing serious problems for society as a whole and certainly for the event industry as well. Over the past weeks, several points races for the Asia Trail Master Championship and Grandmaster Quest have been postponed or even cancelled all together. Initially, everyone had hoped that the worst would be over by mid-April, but while this may be the case for China, the rest of the world is increasingly affected now. Following the postponements of Korea 50K and the Mount Apo Sky Race, the first points race on the ATM schedule is now the Monkeys Trail on Koh Samui island in Thailand on 16/17 May - which seems an eternity away. The 2021 Candidate Race on Bohol in the Philippines, Alicia Ultra, has also been postponed for the second time already to an as yet undefined new date.
Assuming the corona virus will, eventually, be conquered in the next weeks, we will be looking at a very dense race calendar in the second half of 2020. This is not new for ATM - it has always been busier from July to December than in the first semester. Of course, a number of the postponed events now also feature in Q3 or Q4 and - unfortunately - a few organisers are bound by local authorities’ demands. As such, we will have weekends with two or even three ATM points races. This will not help their media exposure as everyone knows it is much more intense and absorbing to watch one movie instead of two or three movies at the same time.
Nevertheless, we have decided that all postponed races on our calendar remain points races for the 2020 ATM Championship and Grandmaster Quest no matter what. Event organisers have forwarded registrations to the new event dates and we do not wish to punish any runner who had planned to score his or her points in those races.
In addition, for the Grandmaster Quest, we will be implementing a two-months-freeze of the time requirement to reach the first level, a.k.a. the Grandmaster 1-star level. According to the regulation, runners have a two-year-timeframe in which they need to obtain 6 points to become an Asia Trail Grandmaster. The two-months ‘bonus’ is of course only valid for runners who already today have completed minimum 1 Grandmaster race distance.
There are no changes as regards to the regulations of the 2020 Asia Trail Master Championship, given only one race got cancelled (9 Dragons Ultra) and the Lantau 70 has come in as the Hong Kong SuperTrail on 31 October. Looking at the calendar today, it should still be more than feasible to compete and score results in five races before the end of the season in mid-December.
The updated race calendar in PDF is downloadable here. The basic event details and links to the official event websites are as usual available via our dropdown menu on this website.
In a nutshell: the event changes
The 9 Dragons Ultra (Hong Kong) : cancelled
Cordillera Mountain Ultra (Philippines): postponed to 28 June
Dalat Ultra Trail (Vietnam): postponed to 20 June
Ultimate Tsaigu (China): postponed to 24 October
Mount Apo Sky Race (Philippines): postponed to a date to be confirmed
Korea 50K (South Korea): postponed to 27 June
Vietnam Jungle Marathon (Vietnam): postponed to 24 October
The 2020 Asia Trail Master Championship Final
Keen observers may have seen for a while that on our event calendar there is a special ‘ATM Final’ event foreseen on Saturday, 19 December 2020. Sadly, the corona situation has also had an unexpected impact here, and we are currently still unable to confirm the race venue and details. We hope to do so by the end of this month.
At present, the final confirmed race on the 2020 ATM Calendar is Japan’s SuperTrail, the Izu Trail Journey, which already hosted the ATM Final twice before in 2017 and 2018. Last season, the Malaysia Mountain Trail Festival took the honour, but that event has been moved forward to 5 December and renamed TNF 100 Malaysia.