Message from the Chair – Feb 2023

FINALLY – RACE RESULTS!

Congratulations to all our AVOHK runners who participated in various events at The Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon earlier this month. It was great to see the AVOHK vests back out in the crowd again. Special mention must go to Rachel Sproston who was champion in the Women’s Master 2 category of the half marathon. Rachel was the 10k champion in the same age category at the last Standard Chartered race in 2021. It will be interesting to see which distance she chooses for the next event!

Gi Ka-man has continued to show excellent form and finished in 2nd place in the Men’s Masters 1 Full Marathon. He was also the first Hong Kong runner across the line in a field that included stiff competition from international invited runners. Ka-man is currently Hong Kong’s top-ranked marathon runner and we wish him every success in his overseas races this year.

Committee member Aldo Kriel had a great day out at the Island District Athletics Championships at the end of January, taking golds in the 35+ AG in both the 100m and 200m and breaking the championship records in both events!

Finally, AVOHK life member Chris Wardlaw represented Australia at the World Masters Short Course Cross Country Championships in Australia at the weekend and finished 4th in the M70 AG. You can read a full report of the race in an article by Colin Whittington who travelled down to cheer the runners on.

AVOHK RACES

Our main priority as a club is to provide opportunities to get our runners running. This has been very challenging over the last few years, but we finally have some good news.

Our outline plan for the year is for the ever-popular 5k series to return, with a fresh new format. Details will be announced on our website in due course, but we anticipate that it will run through September and October. We will also be working towards hosting our flagship event The China Coast Marathon and Half Marathon in early-2024.

The Malcolm Phillips 5k was our only race to continue throughout the pandemic in a virtual form and we are planning for it to return as a physical race this year.

Dave Smith has continued to organise a series of fun runs to celebrate our 40th anniversary year and the next one will feature some relay action on the central waterfront this Saturday, February 25. We hope to have some great photos to share from this.

Elaine Hall
Chair AVOHK