Africans win the 2007 ING Taipei International Marathon

December 17, 2007 The annual "Taipei International Marathon", mainly sponsored by ING Antai (Taiwan Branch of ING Group NV) in the fourth year, started with more than 20,000 athlete's participation. In order to obey the regulation, Taipei City Government, the race organizer, adopted the "ChampionChip" timer system for participants at 9KM, half-marathon, and marathon classes. Comparison to last year, the starting control was apparently better than last year.

Not only intensive races from 42k, 21k, and 9k classes, ING Antai also invited the main actors Hung-yu Yu and Chia-chia Tsui from the local TV advertisement named "Run with your father" to the Fun Run lead-running.

In the Kids Run class, the participants included in not only qualified school teams from "ING Taipei Kids Running" last month but also students outside of Taipei. Although the organizer invited athletes from Basketball Teams of Taipei Municipal Sung Shan Senior High School and Taipower Women Basketball Team to help the security control, some participants were still fallen down after the starts, it forced some runners quit this race. Media from Taiwan and worldwide hoped runners can make a new record at this race, but only Taiwanese runners broke local records at this race because the actual strength was uncertain after different elite runners than past years participated this race. Finally, Hillary Bett from Kenya and Tabitha Tsatsa from Zimbabwe won the title at this race, and Yu-fang Hsu and Wen-chien Wu broke records of local runners to win the Taiwan Champions.

In the after-race press conference, Wikinews Reporter Rico Shen made a brief interview for Bett and Tsatsa about images of Taiwan. They praised the friendship on people of Taiwan and scenery during the full-marathon races. They also hoped their fellow runners can participate this race in the future to enjoy scenery of Taipei.