A very nasty fall at night by women’s top favourite Sherlyn Fugaban cast a shadow over some otherwise fantastic performances by filipino runners at the MUSPO Ultra 100 in Valencia, Bukidnon, on the island of Mindanao. Just before midnight, Fugaban - winner this season of, a.o, the ATM Candidate Races Santa Ines Adventure Run and Sierra Madre Ultra in the Rizal mountains - slid on a wet and muddy downhill trail and tripped over a large tree root. Her coming down could not be worse and resulted in an upper leg fracture. Fugaban had to be evacuated from the scene, which turned out to be complicated, and was hospitalised where she is now waiting for surgery. All things considered, Fugaban was in a positive mood on Sunday afternoon, even though she realises this will take many many months, if not longer, to recover from. A surgery procedure such as this also requires a substantial amount of money, unfortunately. Her team is therefore kindly asking for donations. You can find details here below or on our facebook page.

It was almost six hours into the race when the freak accident happened, and Fugaban was in the lead together with Aggy Sabanal. The latter would run on to win the race in over 21 hours, which indicated how extremely tough the heavy rainfall made the trail course after the start at 6pm in the evening. Ces Wael was pushing Sabanal for most of the race, but had to settle for second just four minutes ahead of Julie Ann Morales.

The men’s race was dominated by Arnie Macaneras and Larry Apolinario until sunrise, when the duo missed a critical marker and went off course for a very long time. When after an hour they finally got back on the right trail, runners such as Sean Anying and Yoyong Sacayle had already passed. Larry Apolinario decided to chase them down and did so in remarkably fast fashion. For Macaneras it was a bit too much, and he decided to take it easy. He would later DNF and score no important ATM Championship points…

Larry Apolinario steamed to victory in 17h29 and raises his profile as an ATM protagonist. It was his first ever ATM points race victory after a second place in Akyathlon 2019. This year, Apolinario had already won the Sierra Made Trail Ultra 75 in May. Many runners showed great form in this race. Sean Anying had his best ATM result ever with a second place, just ahead of Freddie Blanco.

MUSPO: Fugaban's bad fall overshadows brilliant Apolinario win