Reaching for the top: Hong Kong to host Asian leg of the 2016 Continental Skyrunning Champs

Hong Kong will again host the Asian leg of the 2016 Continental Skyrunning Champs on Lantau in December.

The Lantau 50 Ultra Skymarathon, with over 3400 metres elevation gain, will take place on December 4 on the same day as the Lantau Skyrace over 27 kilometres with over 2000m of elevation.

And with organisers having already confirmed 120 international runners from 22 countries for October’s HK50, which is also expected to generate over HK$1 million for the local economy, the event in December is set to further boost the city’s tourism.

“Hong Kong is an excellent stage for international trail running events as we have beautiful landscape, trails and scenery, which is backed up by first class hospitality facilities to cater for all the needs of international runners,” said Kenneth Reid, the chief executive of sponsor MSIG insurance.

“In 2013, the HK50 race series was the first in Hong Kong to gain sanctioning from International Skyrunning Federation for two races, namely the 28km Skyrace and the 50km ultra sky marathon.”

France’s François D’Haene won the 2015 Lantau 50km race, which was actually recorded as 54km, in five hours, 42 minutes and 40 seconds.

“The trail was well designed with technical requirements and typical Hong Kong scenery, especially the stairs and the harbour,” he said.

“[It was]Very cool on the top of that small trail overlooking the ocean views near Keung Shan and then the challenging Lantau Peak and Sunset Peak as pretty nice near the end of the race as quite amazing.”

The 5km Lantau VK, which includes a 1km vertical section, will get proceedings underway on December 2.