TrailWalker to discover Coloane

(L-R) Robert Kirby, President and CEO of the Kirby Group,   Fred Leung, PokerStars Macau Marketing Manager,   Danny McDonagh, PokerStars Macau Operations Manager  and Kowie Geldenhuys, Administrator of Macau Daily Times formalize the organization of Trai

Up to 1,000 people will be setting off on the Coloane trails next September, in the first PokerStars Macau TrailWalker event. Although most participants will be locals, the organizers believe that in the future it could become an important sports event for the local tourism.
TrailWalker, organized by Upward Bound Unlimited (UBU) and Macau Times Publications Ltd, will have two competitions, the 30-kilometre “Full Adventure” and the shorter, 12-kilometre “Family Trail,” both for teams of four people. “It’s been hugely popular with local companies but also very popular for families,”  said Robert Kirby, of Upward Bound Unlimited.
“This event will promote teamwork, communication and problem solving and every entrepreneur knows the importance of that,” he stressed. But the first goal, Kirby said, was to showcase a different side of Macau, “the fantastic trails of Coloane, which even many local people don’t know.” Furthermore, TrailWalker can “encourage a more healthy lifestyle at a time when society is all about fast food and computers,” the organizer told the MDTimes.
The event, scheduled for September 11, fits perfectly into the Macau Sport Development Board’s (ID) “Sports for All” programmes promoting physical exercise, the ID vice-president José Tavares told MDT. “It’s a very good initiative, which we hope will continue for the next years,” he said.
“That’s our goal,” Robert Kirby confirmed. Some teams will be coming from Hong Kong and other Pearl River Delta cities for this inaugural event and the UBU president believes TrailWalker has the potential to become “a very large” annual sports tourism event.

The teams will be encouraged to gather sponsorship for local charities and the organizers expect to raise around MOP 250,000.
TrailWalker starts at 10 am in Hac-Sá and the competitors have six hours to make it back to the beach. “It took us 6 to 8 months to put the course together and I think most teams will take between three and five hours,” Kirby said. After the difficult part, gifts will be waiting for the first eight teams in both categories. But the organizers want to create a “party atmosphere” in Hac-Sá for all the participants, he said.
More informations can be found at: www.macau-trailwalker.com.