Tuesday, November 6, 2007
After a series warm-up matches at Hualien, Kaohsiung, and Taichung, the special “Charity and Kids Running” event came back to Taipei yesterday at Taipei Municipal Datung Senior High School. Before the event, John Wylie (President & CEO of ING Antai) encouraged citizens in Taiwan to add their signatures to the “Charity Ambassador of ING Taipei Marathon” on the official website of the 2007 ING Taipei Marathon and hoped this competition will renew the scale of participation again next month.
Taipei City Government, the main organizer of 2007 ING Taipei Marathon, invited running experts, ING Running Club delegates, athletes of 2009 Summer Deaflympics, and blind-visual runners (approximately 18 runners) split up into 3 teams (ING Antai Running Team, Taiwan Marathon Scud Team, Taipei City Government Runners Team) for charity funds to Taiwan Foundation For Rare Disorders, Chinese Taipei Blind-Visual Road Running Association, and Foundation of 21st Summer Deaflympics Organizing Committee in this 6-people relay competition. Finally, ING Antai Running Team won this competition.
After the charity race to benefit charity organizations and media in Taiwan, ING Antai held “a lap within one minute” special challenge for the Basketball Team of Taipei Municipal Songshan Senior High School. With their excellent performance, the team succeeded in meeting this challenge.
At the end of the event, ING Antai invited 24 elementary schools from Taipei City to the “Kids’ Running Championship”. Before this event, some participants even won good places at Hualien, Kaohsiung, and Taichung warming-up running matches. Due to the actual strength of participants were too close, the organizer decided to split 4 sections by a group draw. Finally, Dong-hu Elementary School won the champion and qualified the main competition.
According to ING Antai, the sum of Charity Fund of ING Taipei Matathon was multiplied between numbers of finished runners and total running mileage with different groups and added from donations at this event. By the way, Deputy Secretary General of Taipei City Government (TCG) Yong-jen Chen talk to Wikinews Reporter Brock and remarked: “The traffic quality of ING Taipei Marathon will be progressively accepted after the criticism by foreigners at 2004 & 2005. With several coordination between supervisors, organizers, and sponsors, we (TCG) promised participants and runners for a great traffic condition at 2007 ING Taipei Marathon.”