Cebu gets ready for Ironman 2018

CEBU - Registration for the Regent Aguila Ironman 70.3 Asia-Pacific Championship opened yesterday morning.

A total of 150 guaranteed slots were available for triathletes in the onsite registration at the Cebu Provincial Capitol’s grounds at 8 a.m. for the prestigious triathlon on Aug. 5 next year here in Cebu.

“3,000 is the max that Cebu can take. We want more people to experience the Philippines,” Sunrise Events general manager Princess Galura said yesterday.

Bringing the prestigious Asia-Pacific race here in Cebu isn’t easy. Sunrise, however, won the bid to host the IronMan 70.3 Asia-Pacific Championship here in Cebu.

“A lot of money is involved to bring the Asia-Pacific here in Cebu. We also need to bring the pros. There’s a lot of money involved,” she said.

Sunrise Events will also be hosting two other Ironman tournaments this year - the IronMan 5051 in Subic on Nov. 4 and the Alveo IronMan 70.3 Davao in Davao City.

“This is the 10th anniversary of Sunrise in hosting the Ironman. We want to make our 10th year good,” said Galura, who will be supervising the onsite registration in Davao City for the Davao race. “It’s a one-time, bigtime in Subic. Subic is the only one that can accommodate 80 kilometers.”

Cebu hosted the IronMan 70.3 Asia-Pacific Championship last year and drew a total of 3,000 triathletes from 50 different nations. It also included 50 pro triathletes. Tim Reed emerged the winner of the last AsiaPacific race for the Men’s division, while Caroline Steffens finished at the top of the women’s division.

Regent recently inked a deal to become the main sponosor of IronMan here in Cebu for the next five years after its contract with Cobra Energy Drink expired in the last Ironman 70.3 Philippines race last month.

Because of the difficulty of the swim part in Lapu-Lapu City here in Cebu, organizers will be very strict with the classification of athletes for next year’s tournament for each participant’s safety.

“We will have a swim validation. The swim part is very hard here in Cebu. The swim part here in Cebu has an average time of one hour and one minute. They will be given caps based on their time declared and validated,” said Galura.

The average time of swimmers here in last race in Cebu was 1:01:42 compared with 43 minutes in Subic.