SOO Wai Ching travels extensively as a tower runner and is away nearly every weekend in some part of the world, competing to be the best.
In only his second attempt in the World Championships last weekend in Taiwan, he came out first to become the first Malaysian world champion.
The last time he participated in the World Championships was in 2018 in the second edition of the World Championships.
Back then, his goal was to achieve an overall Top 10 position and he did just that. It was also then that he set his goal to win the World Champion title one day.
The 2020 World Championships was postponed during to the pandemic. It finally place last week on May 4.
The Taipei 101 Run Up attracted almost 6,000 participants from more than 40 countries.
The race format required participants to run up the building twice, with the first round being a full run up (91 floors)
Soo achieved a time of 11 min 35.61 sec, an improvement of almost five seconds from last year. However, his main rival, Ryoji Watanabe achieved a much faster time of 11 min 30.98 sec, to lead Soo by 4.63 seconds.
In round two, the pressure was on Soo to beat Ryoji by more than four seconds to win the title. He finished with a time of 7 min 01.01 sec.
Ryoji crossed the finishing line 38 seconds later for Soo to win the overall position.
The journey to world champion has taken about four years, Towerrunning Association of Malaysia president Ravinder Singh said.
Now that Malaysia has a world champion, the possibility of the country hosting a championship is now in the cards, he said.
Malaysia has many iconic skyscrapers and Soo would surely be happy to win at home. – May 10, 2024
