Saturday 18, 2023 in Warsaw was the biggest international gathering of the Towerrunning family since pandemy stroke us. The elite athletes had to race the 37 floors with 836 stairs twice – without much recovery time between their climbs. Before their turn 500+ athletes and firefighters earned their medals at the 11th edition of Bieg Na Szczyt Rondo 1, a very popular traditional event in the Polish capital that is sold out usually a few hours after registration opening !
The female race was very very tight and finally Italian Valentina Belotti in 9:36,06 (4:50,31-4:45,75) was exactly 0,5 seconds faster than Anna Ficner. The home favourite clocked 9:36,56 (4:46,75-4:49,81) and narrowly lost her lead from heat 1. A lucky, but deserved win for Valentina as with bib 11 she had traffic in the stairwell whereas Anna with bib 1 had free space. Both raced in an own class and clocked sub4 in both heats. Another small gap divided places 3 and 4. The two heats by Verena Schmitz from Germany were 0,75 and 0,11 seconds faster than those of Kaisa Kukk in her first stair stair race outside Estonia. Less than ten seconds behind Polish mountain runner Paulina Tracz finished on the last price money 5th place.
Much tension was before the male race. World number 1 Wai Ching Soh from Malaysia was keen to take revenge. At the European Championships on that soil last year Fabio Ruga was the first one to defeat him after a series of 19 victories before. And there was the previous long time number 1 Piotr Lobodzinski from Poland – the first encounter of them since February 2020 in Dubai. And then here was his long time Asian contrahent Ryoji Watanabe from Japan in his first stair race on European grounds.
Wai Ching made it in 7:24,01. He laid the base in heat 1 with a 3:33, the fastest time of the day by 8 seconds. Piotr and Fabio had a faster second heat but could not reduce the gap. Piotr finished 2nd in 7:27,76 and Fabio 3rd in 7:35,71. It was not the day of Ryoji who claimed 4th place with a final time of 7:45,04. The top four athletes ran both heats sub5. Faster than this mark was Czech mountain runner Tomas Macecek in his first heat, finally he placed 5th overall confirming his surprise 3rd place last year at the Euros.
All results can be found at http://wyniki.datasport.pl/results4147 .
Pictures can be found on the result page and here.
Some interesting aspects can be learned at https://www.towerrunning.com/splits/RondoEliteStats.pdf .
Within the victory ceremony the Towerrunning Tour Champions 2022 Kamila Chomanicova and Wai Ching Soh received their trophies. Maybe this year we will have a Tour Final at Shanghai Tower again.
In the name of the participants we thank Piotr Jakobik and his team for another exciting race and look forward the 12th edition next year !
