Organizers pick new venue for X-Terra triathlon

The 2013 Vaseline Men X-Terra triathlon will have a new venue when it returns to Liloan town, northern Cebu on March 2 and 3.

The Sea Front beach resort in Liloan will be the new host of the event this year, as organizers aim to give participants a feel of the terrain of the outdoors.

The announcement was made during yesterday’s official launching at the Laguna Garden Cafe.

Last year, the venue of the country’s premier off-road triathlon was at the Amara subdivision.

“The main reason we moved it from Amara to Sea Front is because Amara is now developing its housing projects because it is a subdivision in the first place,” said X-Terra project director Princess Galura of Sunrise events.

Also present yesterday were Liloan mayor Duke Frasco, who is also a competitor of the race, and Noy Jopson.

The off-road triathlon features a 1.5-kilometer swim, 35-kilometer bike and a 10-kilometer run. This serves as a qualifying event for the age-group category for the XTerra World Championships in Maui, Hawaii. Jopson, Drew Arellano, Redg Plopinio, Matteo Guidicelli and Hector Yuzon qualified in a race held in Luzon last year.

The technical group said they prepared a new race course for this year’s event. This will give the participants more off-road biking and trail running in the deep sections of Liloan.

“We will give participants a taste of what real XTerra is like,” said Jeremy Go of the technical group.

Meanwhile, this is the first time in two years that the triathlon will be held on a Saturday, which will be followed by the trail run on the next day.

“We decided to move the triathlon to Saturday because a lot of triathletes want to join the trail run the following day, which will serve as their recovery activity after the race. We also noticed that a lot of runners are expected to join the race on Sunday,” added Galura.

Around 400 triathletes will compete this year. The organizers were able to gather more than 200 as of yesterday to compete in the Filipino elite, XTerra Lite, full triathlon relay, and lite relay.

The race will again field in world-class triathletes such as pro category defending champion of XTerra Philippines Ben Allen of Australia along with Oliver Marceau of France, Dan Hugo of South Africa, Sam Gardner of Great Britain, Matt O’Halloran of Canada, Rory Downie of Scotland, Bradley Sean Weiss of South Africa and the only Asian pro category competitor, Shahrom Abdullah of Malaysia.

In the women’s professional category, defending champion Renata Bucher of Austria, Jacqui Slack from Great Britain, Lesley Peterson and Carina Wasle of South Africa are considered as the contenders for the top spot.

Rochelle Tan and Neil Catiil, the defending champion of the Filipino elite category, will lead the cast of locals.