Despite COVID-19, 6,000 runners race in Chinese ultramarathon

Earlier in the summer, an ultrarunning event was held in China’s Chongli District, and it reportedly featured 6,000 competitors across five races. China was the first country that dealt with the coronavirus, and now it is coping fairly well, especially compared to other countries like the U.S., Brazil or India. Even so, no country can boast a clean record when it comes to the pandemic just yet, and until a vaccine is developed, there will be the ever-present threat of COVID-19. While this is a reality that every country has to accept, the Chongli 168 ultramarathon was given the go-ahead, and it hosted an enormous field of runners.

China returns to ‘old normal’ with 6,000 runners at Chongli trail race despite the coronavirus https://t.co/ES7BHHDA89

— South China Morning Post (@SCMPNews) August 19, 2020

The 2020 running of the Chongli 168, which occurred in July, was recently reported by the South China Morning Post. The event featured several race distances: 30K, 50K, 70K, 100K and 168K. In 2019, the Chongli 168 had a combined total of about 3,000 runners competing across its different races, but the lack of racing opportunities in China (and the rest of the world) over the last few months led to a massive surge of interest in the July ultramarathon. 

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The size of the field may not seem like the safest call in the age of social distancing, but race organizers didn’t ignore COVID-19 altogether. Runners had to wear masks when collecting their bibs and while waiting in their starting corrals, and every participant’s temperature was taken upon arrival at the race venue. 

2020 MIDI MUSIC SEASON IN CHONGLI CHINA pic.twitter.com/7w33R9FRSC

— lawxi (@lawxi3) August 17, 2020

In addition to these precautionary measures, any runners travelling from Dalien — a coastal city in China’s Liaoning province that has seen a recent surge in COVID-19 cases — had to be tested within a week of running the race. Anyone who either didn’t get tested or registered a positive test was not permitted to race.

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Chongli also recently hosted the Midi Music Festival, a two-day event that reportedly attracted 4,600 people each day. As these two events make clear, the country is returning to some sense of normalcy, and if the coronavirus continues to be kept at bay, that could lead to more races in the near future, like the Gaoligong by UTMB, which is set for December.