The International Association of Ultrarunners (IAU) 24 Hour Asia and Oceania Championship will be held at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium. This is the first time the event is being conducted in India and the first since the onset of COVID-19 pandemic.
The event, comprising 37 elite runners, will see participation from four Asia-Oceania countries (India, Australia, Chinese Taipei and Lebanon) and will be flagged off at 9 a.m. on Saturday and will end 24 hours later.
The competition is a test of who runs the most in a 24-hour window, in the present case on an outdoor 400m track. There will be a change in the direction of running once every four hours and the minimum time an athlete has to spend on the track is 21 hours.
Runners from Poland and the United Kingdom have been invited to the competition and they will run in the open category. Additionally, there will be 12 hours open category run and 12 hours relay run (six runners running for two hours each).
India has fielded a team of 12 ultrarunners led by Amar Singh Devanda, whose personal best is a distance of 240.8km over 24 hours. A good performance here can help an athlete’s case in getting selected for the Indian team for the IAU 24H World Championships next year.