- euronews.com
VIVA – The Indonesian National Sports Committee (KONI) will hold the Indonesia International Marathon (IIM) 2022 after being absent for two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The province of Bali was chosen to host this event which will be held offline on June 26, 2022 with the concept of Sport Tourism.
This marathon competition will feature four categories, ranging from 5k, 10k, half marathon, and marathon.
The participants not only get an unforgettable experience, the participants will also have the opportunity to get a prize of IDR 1 billion. The prize was prepared for anyone who managed to break the national record of marathon runner, Eduardus Nabunome.
Currently, Edu still holds the fastest record by finishing the marathon in 2 hours 19 minutes 18 seconds which was set in 1993.
In addition, the committee also prepared hundreds of millions of other prizes for other winners. Of course, this nominal prize makes this running competition even more interesting to participate in. Regarding the prize, the Secretary General of the Central KONI, Ade Lukman. He hopes that the national record that has lasted for decades will be broken at this event.
"Hope, there are Indonesian runners who can break the existing record. Yesterday at the 2021 SEA Games, someone broke the world record, what does that mean? That we can," said Ade at a press conference in Jakarta on Tuesday, May 31, 2022.
"Indonesia surely can, we are optimistic with the ability of these athletes to break the record, this has been clearly proven, we hope the marathon can also break the record," added Ade.
As a marathon running competition to be annual agenda of KONI, the Indonesia International Marathon also received support from Executive Board of the Indonesian Athletics Association (PB PASI), Ministry of Youth and Sports of the Republic of Indonesia, Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy, Bali Provincial Government, and the Bali Province Dekranasda.
IIM's Race Director, Riena Tambunan, is very confident that this marathon will be a success. As proof, as many as 3.500 participants have registered to take part in this activity.
Not only from the running community, this event will also be attended by a number of national running athletes considering that this event is also supported by PB PASI. One of the runners who participated was Agus Prayogo.
To make the event livelier, the organizing committee also invited runners from Iran, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam. Most of them are from the Southeast Asian region because they are considered to have the same emotional feeling as a result of being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
"This activity will not only lift the morale of the runners after being unable to participate in this kind of activity for a long time, but also can help promote sport tourism," said Riena.
For information, IIM will refer to the AIMS World Athletics standards. They also involved one of the founders and ex-directors of the Tokyo Marathon Manabu Tanaka and international course measurer David Katz.
With all these advantages, IIM is expected to be able to match the level of The Abbott World Marathon Majors which have been held in Tokyo, Boston, Berlin, New York and Chicago.
