KUALA LUMPUR – Tower-runner Soh Wai Ching defended his title at the Tunnel to Towers Tower Climb NYC at the One World Trade Centre in New York, yesterday.
In a statement today, the Malaysia Tower-running Association said that the national athlete, 28, recorded a new personal best of 12min 33sec in the event, which was a 13-second improvement over his time last year..
Selayang-born Wai Ching ran up 104 floors, covering 2,226 steps with an elevation of 423m.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, Wai Ching has been in unstoppable form – winning all the tower-running competitions in the United States.
“He started off the race on a fast pace for the first part of the stairs and right until the changing of the direction of the stairs from anti-clockwise to the clockwise direction, he then settled into a steady pace,” read the association’s statement.
“At the 66th floor, there was about one-third of the journey left for the climb, Wai Ching started to feel tired, but he quickly shifted his mind to keep going and finish off the race.”
The race flagged off at 5am local time yesterday (5pm Malaysia time yesterday) with 1,000 participants taking part.
The tournament also raised US$1 million (RM4.58 million) for the Tunnel to Towers Foundation.
From the statement, it is understood that the world’s number one tower runner believes that he could have performed better and wishes to return and have a go at the course record of 12min 5sec set by Poland’s Piotr Lobodzinski in 2018.
Wai Ching is currently the fastest Asian to run up the One World Trade Centre as he surpassed Ryoji Watanabe of Japan who clocked a time of 12min 37sec in the 2019 edition. – The Vibes, June 5, 2023
