Tower running gives the world's athletes a new high
Tower running is booming and the sport's governing body is determined to make it an Olympic event
Athlete Suzy Walsham is hard to beat on a flat surface, be it a road or a track. When bounding up steps to the top of a skyscraper, she is virtually uncatchable.
Walsham is the poster girl for tower running, whereby competitors race to the top of iconic skyscrapers such as the Empire State Building in New York City and, two weekends ago, the 330-metre-high China World Summit Wing hotel in Beijing.
At the top of the building, you can barely walk. You try to take back your breath
Walsham, a former Australian national track athlete, was the fastest woman up the 2,041 steps of the 82-storey hotel in 11 minutes, 7 seconds.
"The race was tough," says Walsham, who works in Singapore as a manager for a computer security firm. "Although the stairs were not very high, the stairwell was quite complicated, with random flat bits of running, changing direction, changing stairwells and so on. But that also made the race interesting."
Who knew stairwells had such intricacies? Stair climbing, in fact, has a global schedule of races comprising 150 events across 25 countries. Michael Reichetzeder, executive director of the Tower-Running World Council, is on a mission to make tower running an Olympic sport.
Beijing was a new addition to and the fourth stage of this year's eight-race Vertical World Circuit, which began in 2009. The premier circuit also includes the race up the Empire State and other buildings in Switzerland, Spain, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore and Brazil.