Mount Apo to decide the new ATM Champions!

The 2022 Asia Trail Master Championship will reach its conclusion this Saturday at the Mount Apo Sky Race in Davao, Philippines with a 75km sea-to-summit-return race. For the first time in ATM history, the Championship will be decided in a winner-takes-it final race with qualified runners, who scored enough points in ATM promoted races throughout the year to be in the top 5 of their country in our points ranking. It’s a new approach that has been applauded by as good as everyone in the competitive Asian trail community, and we are looking forward to see how it all pans out this weekend.

The list of favourites is long and it’s anyone’s guess who can clinch the first Asia Trail Master champion title since 2019, before covid interrupted everything. While reigning female champion Veronika Vadovicova has family priorities at the moment, 2019 male champion John Ellis did everything to get qualified for this year’s Final and will sell his skin and title at a very high price this Saturday. The race distance of 75km probably doesn’t seem long enough for him, but Mt Apo is not an ordinary 75km race. Pablo Diago Gonzales, a very decent reference, won the 70k race in 2017 in 12 hours, and that opens perspectives for an ultra specialist like John Ellis - now in his mid-forties but looking every bit as fit and stoked as three years ago. Kind reminder: nobody has ever won the ATM Championship twice. Two other former champions are also in the race tomorrow: 2018 hero Alessandro Sherpa, who qualified by finishing MMTF 50 and CMU 50 since he returned to Asia and is very much focused on this weekend, and 2015 inaugural champion Arief Wismoyono from Indonesia, who at Mantra Summits Challenge 75 was absolutely smashing it last July. Mind you, Mantra Summits 75 is the closest it can get to the Mount Apo Sky Race... It is truly hard to predict the outcome, which makes it so exciting and worthy of a championship race.

Jeff Campbell, Canadian residing in Hong Kong and running for Team Asia Expat, won Dark 45 and Vietnam Jungle Marathon 70 to qualify and is the most tipped potential champion. But isn’t 75km on a very technical mountain trail a bit too much for his very fast legs? The same can be said about Japan’s Hisashi Kitamura. Super fast on road marathon, and increasingly resilient on technical trails, but this is Mt Apo... Enter the pure mountain goats like aforementioned Arief Wismoyono, Malaysia’s Milton Amat and Wilsen Singgin and last but not least Quang Tran from Vietnam. Of all the highest ranked runners, Quang Tran is the least mentioned as a potential winner tomorrow, primarily because he is relatively unknown outside Vietnam still. He can change all that as we understand he is highly motivated to prove himself this weekend. We remember his easy victory in the Mantra Summits Challenge 116km race last July. Again, that race is the closest reference to what runners will get tomorrow. Malaysia arguably has the strongest team of all in the ATM Final, men and women, and are the top favourites to clinch the new ATM Team Championship. The finish times of the best 3 men and best 3 women of each team will be accumulated to produce the team result. Until a month or two ago, Sabah’s Milton Amat was arguably the man-to-beat in the Mt Apo Sky Race. Milton this season was better than ever. Maybe he still is, but the fact is that he has done a lot of racing over the past weeks so questions have been raised about his physical and mental state going into this last race of the year. If Milton Amat were to win tomorrow, a lot of training books would need to be rewritten, and we would certainly love that. Malaysia has more irons in the fire, however. Mohammad Affindi has also been exceptionally strong this year with wins in BUTM and Bali Trail Challenge. He could cause the upset if he has a good day, just like teammate Wilsen Singgin. You never really know with Singgin, who can be either superbly strong or remarkably below-par. In any case, Mount Apo is the kind of terrain Singgin, winner of MMTF 2021 and UT Chiang Rai 230 in 2019, likes a lot. Amir Zaki and Jeffery Budin - both race winners themselves this ATM season - are excellent backups and potential ‘helpers’ for Team Malaysia. Helping your teammates is allowed in the ATM Final, including carrying extra water or food for the captains - as long as every single runner respects the mandatory gear requirements. Mt Apo Sky Race is an out-and-back course, so the faster runners will come across the more slower ones at some point.

We have not even mentioned Team Pilipinas, the home favourites, and their star runner Arnie Macaneras, who will be running really in his own backyard. Nobody knows Mount Apo better than Macaneras and Sean Aying. Two weeks ago at Cordillera Mountain Ultra, Macaneras proved to be reaching his top level again at the right time. Many co-favourites fear him, and they have every reason to. Sadly, Philippines will be missing Larry Apolinario, who has been advised not to run by his physioterapist as an injury he sustained while winning MUSPO 100 in July is still not properly healed and recent race results suggest that it is doing Apolinario more damage than good. His

place in the team is taken last-minute by Rhys Pawid. Angelito Vertudazo is the fourth runner in the team. Poy Brillantes qualified by right as well, but a professional emergency prevented him from taking the flight from Manila to Davao yesterday.

The women’s home team will also miss CMU winner Cecille Wael, who unfortunately opted out just a few days ago. For the potential replacements Aggy Sabanal and Angelie Blanco it was too late to still make the trip to Davao.

The women’s race tomorrow is excepted to be an exciting first-time battle between Vietnam’s new star Hau Ha and Singapore-based Belgian Vanja Cnops. Both are unbeaten in ATM this season and actually looked unbeatable, too. Hong Kong-based Hungarian Ezster Csillag was also qualified for the ATM Final and keen to compete, but her busy racing schedule over the past weeks resulted into too much fatigue. The dual between Hau Ha and Vanja Cnops will be mouthwatering, though. For Hau Ha, on paper, it will be the first race she will normally be genuinely tested by another female competitor, who on top has faster road running times than herself, and credentials as a national cross-country and trail athlete. Vanja Cnops has been in Santa Cruz for a week and loved it. She has never run longer than 70km, however. Similar with Jeff Campbell, that is her alleged handicap, given Hau Ha has proven she can handle even 100km very well by comfortably winning Vietnam Mountain Marathon 100 overall, i.e. beating all the men in the process. The Vietnamese ace, who only started competing for real last March, is still prone to nutritional issues, however, and that could cost her against a seasoned runner like Cnops, who has been in several running ‘wars’ already.

Everyone expects those two ladies to fight for the victory and the ATM title, but behind them the battle for third place is also wide open. Julie Ann Morales and Irish Glorioso from Philippines will be keen to get a strong result, Malaysia has Sally Yap and Izzah Hazirah as arguable likeliest podium candidates, Vietnam also has Ngoc Lien Trinh and Lan Huong Vu, and Indonesia has its technical mountain ultra specialist Shindy Patricia in the race, too. From Japan, we can also expect Moeko Yasugahira to fight for third place.

The 75km race will be covered live on our usual ATM media channels, and there will be live GPS tracking of all the runners via: https://live.asiatrailmaster.com/mtaposkyrace22/