By Jean Malanum
MANILA – All is set for the 45th Asian Cycling Confederation (ACC) Track Cycling Championships and 14th Asian Para Track Cycling Championships which will kick off on March 25 at the Tagaytay CT Velodrome in Cavite.
ACC president Dato’ Amarjit Singh Gill and Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) chairperson John Patrick Gregorio lead a list of distinguished sports officials for the opening ceremony.
Philippine Olympic Committee president Abaham Tolentino will join Gill and Gregorio in opening the tournaments to be held in the country for the first time since the 1995 edition of the annual event at the brand-new Tagaytay CT Velodrome, a UCI-standard 250-meter indoor track facility.
“This is the biggest international track cycling event that Tagaytay City, and the country for that matter, is hosting in three decades,” said Tolentino in a news release Monday.
“In terms of participation, we also have one of the biggest in ACC track championships history,” added the president of PhilCycling, the national sports association of cycling.
The opening ceremony is set at 9 a.m. and the first event starts at 10 a.m. among the more than 600 athletes from 16 Asian countries competing in track and para track.
Mayor Brent Tolentino of host Tagaytay City is supporting the championships along with the PSC, MVP Sports Foundation, Sports Plus PH, Toyota and Peak.
The Asian championships offer 44 gold medals, while 30 golds are staked in the para track competitions that will be held simultaneously until March 31.
Competitions in the ACC championships will be in individual and team pursuit, sprint, keirin, elimination race, omnium, points race, scratch race, Madison and 1-kilometer for both men and women categories.
The events in the para track cycling competitions are the individual pursuit, 1,000 meters time trial, sprint, elimination, scratch race and mixed team and tandem sprints.
Participating countries are Chinese-Taipei, Hong Kong-China, Indonesia, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, Macao-China, Malaysia, China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and host Philippines. (PNA)
