Life in Siguniangshan, 3,200 meters above sea level, is not made for mountain running. That’s why neighbors are scared when they see people running next to the horses that carry tourists where their legs cannot carry them, mired in mud, in the feces they leave behind. It takes four hours by road to get there from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, the panda region. There are no higher mountains in the east of the planet than its sentinel, Mount Siguniang (6,250 meters), a Macedonia of peaks called the Four Sisters, the name of the first Golden Trail Series race in China. The great mountain racing circuit hopes that its arrival will serve to awaken a sleeping giant. Until then, the awakened giant is Kenya. Patrick Kipngeno and Joyce Njeru, two high-altitude cats, took a victory on a historic day for their sport.
The arrival of the trail to China came with long distances: more kilometers than slopes. The Goldens have brought the “madness”, a 21 kilometer race with 1,530 meters of positive gradient represented in a two kilometer descent with an average slope close to 40%: the morning sun dried the mud of the last few days and avoided carnage . “I don’t think there is a difference between Asian athletes and European athletes, it’s a question of how much they train,” summarizes the circuit director, Greg Vollet, who remembers his first visit to China in 2011 and the simple questions: how to climb that mountain? “I loved his desire to learn. “They have grown very quickly and when they start something, they never stop.” The formula is that the references – Yao Miao is its great runner – are “the locomotive that drives the next generation to the international scene.”
There is no lack of interest in the local press, with a greater call than in European races. And a message: “Chinese journalists know more about international trail running than international journalists know about Chinese trail running.” Nor in the public, which adorned the halfway point of the great climb, about 900 meters of positive gradient in the first eight kilometers. After spending the week taking ‘selfies’ with the athletes, they set up a corridor typical of major races next to the omnipresent multicolored flags that extol their roots in their land. The Chinese fan praises the suffering and smiles while he records the hardships.
The narrative thread of a race in which the altitude puts a bomb on the heart and steals oxygen, something that Marta Martínez needed when crossing the finish line: “I thought I was dying.” Álex García went in search of a doctor and the thing remained an anecdote. The bill of climbs that at a lower altitude would be sliding, but the effort increases exponentially when the slope goes up. Telemetry does not explain a kilometer at 22% on the border of 4,000 meters. The summit – the horses carried the supplies there – is a consolation for the eyes, which comes face to face with the imposing snowy wall of the Siguniang, but continues that descent that destroys the muscles before reaching a dream temple. There are less than ten kilometers left with barely a third of the total gradient, but that is already agony.
There were exceptions like Patrick Kipngeno, who displayed his title as world champion in vertical climbing and easily managed the four minutes that took him to the top over his pursuers, an abyss. A victory that adds to Kobe’s seven days ago. It was a demonstration of power because he went under two hours (1h59m10s), six minutes less than Elhousine Elazzaoui, who follows him in the general standings. Alain Santamaría was sixth – the Riojan has burst onto the circuit with force after being eleventh in Japan – and Álex García, ninth. The Chinese Houhua Zhang, who has been training in the area for a month, was only two minutes away from his target time (2h10m) and was seventh.
For Joyce Njeru it was her first victory in the Goldens, a fruit she came close to the previous week. This time she did not miss the lead – she won after 2h25m27s –, four minutes less than the Swiss Maude Mathys, her executioner in Kobe. The reappearance of the world champion, the American Grayson Murphy, earned third place, just 30 seconds less than Naiara Irigoyen, who demonstrated to the greats the value of her resume in prestigious events such as Zegama. She was the first of the five Spaniards in the top-10, along with Malen Osa (5th), Sara Alonso (7th), Julia Font (8th despite not being able to take a drink of water to the top because her isotonic was damaged) and Rosa Lara Feliu (10th). In between, Miao, seventh, slipped in, the tip of the iceberg of the awakening of the Chinese trail.
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