Australian Mass Participation Sporting Events Alliance to stage first conference in November

The Australian Mass Participation Sporting Events Alliance (AMPSEA) has announced that its inaugural conference will be held in Sydney on 22nd November.

With the recent staging of the Gold Coast Marathon and Sydney City to Surf showing that the mass participation sector is starting to recover after events were halted during the pandemic, AMPSEA is looking for its conference to address the biggest challenges facing the industry.

In May, the organisers of Mass Participation World advised of the findings of COVID Transmission Study that it researched which showed there being no need to keep cancelling events.

The research identified that among over 10 million participants there had only been five reported COVID cases.

Among new and returning events, the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon (SCSM) will return in full in December for the first time since 2019.

Last year’s edition, the largest in-person running event held in Singapore since the COVID-19 pandemic began, saw 4,000 runners flagged off in waves of 50 - with three moving off every 10 seconds - to ensure safe distancing.

February next year will also see Tasmania’s first ever IRONMAN 70.3 race hosted in 2023 in the heart of Hobart.

Scheduled to take place on Sunday 5th February 2023, the multi-discipline event will see more than 1,000 athletes make their way to Hobart to participate in the 1.9km swim, 90km ride and 21.1 km run.

Mass participation event stakeholders are also advancing the potential for obstacle racing to be included in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics with Spartan race founder and Chief Executive Joe De Sena leading the way in making obstacle course racing an Olympic sport, potentially as an adaptation of modern pentathlon.

However, challenges remain as only last month World Athletics advised that the World half-marathon championships, due to be held in the Chinese city of Yangzhou in November, had been cancelled due to COVID-19.

This year's event was due to be the last before the championships are renamed the world road running championships with the addition of 5-kilometre races and mass-participation events alongside the elite competitions.

With the first of the revamped events to be held next year in Latvia, World Athletics advised that Yangzhou will host the world road running championships in 2027.

World Athletics President, Sebastian Coe advised that the body's "decision to award another event to Yangzhou in 2027 indicates its faith in the organising committee and willingness to return and stage a World Athletics Series road running event there at the first available opportunity."

In May it was reported that the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne (UIPM), modern pentathlon's international governing body, was considering adding obstacle course racing to its program at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Click here for more information on AMPSEA's inaugural conference in the Australasian Leisure Management industry Calendar.

Image: Gold Coast Marathon.