Marathon largest field in event’s history so far
THE 27th Angkor International Half-Marathon, which took place on December 4 in Angkor Archaeological Park with the Kingdom’s ancient temples – including Angkor Wat – serving as a majestic backdrop to the race, was run this year by nearly 8,000 runners from 69 countries around the world.
The organisers said that the event went smoothly, ended happily and that it did a great job once again of promoting tourism in Siem Reap.
According to Minister of Tourism Thong Khon the 27th Half-Marathon was run by a total of 7,543 local and international athletes, including 5,814 Cambodian athletes and 1,720 international athletes from 69 countries, which was the largest turn out so far in the history of the event.
There was a 21km half-marathon with 1,760 participants, a wheelchair half-marathon with 22 racers, a 10km run with 3,404 participants including 50 runners with disabilities, and 1438 runners participated in the 5km run, while 860 runners opted for the 3km course.
For the men’s 21km race, first place went to KhmerJapanese marathoner Takizaki Kuniaki with a time of 1:18:13.92 and second place went to Cambodian runner Kong Sambath with a time of 1:19.15.39, while third place went to Japan’s Takaki Miyake with a time of 1:20:49.60.
In the women’s 21km race, first place went to Nickel Lindsey of the US with a time of 1:34:47.63, second place was taken by Finland’s Routtinen Teija with a time of 1:37:02.70, while Japan’s Ota Natsuko ran the course in 1:41:13.93 to finish third.
“Today there are signs that the journey to recover our tourism sector rapidly and with a positive trajectory has made significant advances towards attracting domestic and international tourists in pre-pandemic numbers again soon,” said Khon.” Indeed, Cambodia has become the first safe tourism destination that can provide the ultimate warmth under the shelter of peace, political stability and development.”
“Our race day has more participants than last year because last year was the first year of the pre-event as we gained a few hundred participants, but this time there were almost 8,000 runners, so we see it as a positive situation pointing to next year’s attendance getting a big boost,” said Vath Chamroeun, secretary of state at the tourism ministry and member of the organising commission.
At the same time, Chamroeun said that the most important thing was that the Angkor International HalfMarathon was run smoothly and safely and no serious problems occurred during the event as the athletes were able to run without worry or incident because everywhere during the run they had water stations set up for them as well as doctors on hand and security guards.