By Kevin Estrada
The cycling races are one of the worst hit sports in the year 2020 due to the global coronavirus pandemic, but that did not stop PRURide PH to come up with virtual races in the meantime, as preparations for next year’s race are underway.
As PRURide PH looked at their counterparts in RideLondon, Pru Life Senior VP and Marketing chief Allan Tumbaga told the Philippine Sportswriters’ Association Forum Tuesday morning that they are looking for options in both the virtual and the physical races for its next edition in 2021.
The 2020 race was supposed to be held from March 11-15 in Clark, but the government-imposed lockdown meant that they have no other recourse but to scrap it altogether, with refunds already available to those registered cyclists, amateur or professional.
“Katulad ng nangyari sa London, what they did is they went virtual as well,” he said, pertaining to the inaugural virtual RideLondon race which took place last August 15-23 with more than 11-thousand participants covering more than 212-thousand kilometers.
However, he hopes that the physical races will resume once the situation subsides.
“Importante talaga yung safety natin. Iba pa din yung klaro tayo, na mag-ingat. I think it may take some time for us to make sure that all will be safe in a mass gathering.”
Pru Life AVP Khalil Robles added that the signature UCI 2.2 race is still in their plans next year, but despite the resumption of the major cycling events including the prestigious Tour De France, they are still prioritizing the health of the cyclists.
“We’ll be taking it more on a slower basis to see kung kaya ba natin talaga kunin ang UCI by that time,” he said.
Pandemic or no pandemic, the people behind PruRide are still firm behind to their mission in promoting healthy living.
“We are promoting the health consciousness of the Filipinos. Yes we canceled the physical event, but we decided to continue with the virtual [races],” Tumbaga added.
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Photo courtesy of PRURide.Ph site
