Undeterred by the COVID-19 pandemic, about 30,000 people are to participate in the Standard Chartered Taipei Marathon on Jan. 24 next year, Standard Chartered Bank (Taiwan) said yesterday.
The bank began accepting general registrations for the road race at 4pm yesterday.
Prior to that it had allocated 12,000 spots for early-bird entries, which were all taken within four days after registration opened on Tuesday last week, the bank said.
Photo: Screen grab from Facebook
Standard Chartered chief executive officer Anthony Lin (林遠棟) told a media conference in Taipei through a video message that he could feel the positive vibes brought by sports after this year completing his first half-marathon.
The bank invites people to join the race, which has been held annually since 2014, Lin said.
Last year, the bank launched a three-year project with Swarovski AG to honor legendary runners.
The Taipei race in January is to honor 29-year-old Japanese long-distance runner Suguru Osako, who this year set a Japanese record of 2 hours, 5 minutes, 29 seconds at the Tokyo Marathon, the bank said.
The theme for next year’s race is “never give up,” which characterizes Osako’s spirit, the bank said, adding that the slogan would be imprinted on the finishers’ medals.
In addition to 42km and 21km races, the event has 13km and 2.5km routes so that people of all ages can participate, it said.
To motivate more people to join the first marathon next year, Standard Chartered has invited Taiwanese runner Chang Chia-che (張嘉哲) and fashion blogger and model Molly Chiang (莫莉) to lead two teams to compete over 42km and 13km respectively, it said.
Chang, 37, said that the previous time he competed in Taiwan was at the 2013 National Games in Taipei.
Chang underwent surgery for a torn tibialis posterior tendon in 2014, which he said was the lowest point of his life.
He recovered and ran a personal best of 2:15:02 in last year’s Guangzhou Marathon, Chang said.
In a new feature for next year, elite runners would start three minutes ahead of the rest of the pack so that they have less crowded conditions, the Chinese Taipei Road Running Association said.
Standard Chartered has received more than NT$68 million (US$2.33 million) in donations through the marathon to help visually challenged people and young people from low and middle-income families to pursue their career goals, it said, adding that funds raised through next year’s race would supplement that total.
Standard Chartered head of corporate affairs and brand marketing Gillian Chen (陳穎勳) said that part of the registration fee would help fund Futuremakers, a Standard Chartered Group global initiative seeking to promote greater economic inclusion for young people.
People can donate to the initiative when they register for next year’s race, Chen said, adding that it raised NT$2.5 million in donations from this year’s race.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS