Onifa demonstrates skills in Akha Trail

What a run by John Ray Onifa last weekend along the Myanmar border in the far north of Thailand! The Filipino trail star gave a pure demonstration on the wet and slippery mountain forest trails of Akha Trail to win his second ATM race in a fortnight in an incredible time of 9h57. That’s 80 km with 5500 hm elevation gain! Onifa finished nearly four hours ahead of second-placed runner, Thosaeng Kunno, at this moment. He finished just before midnight, unfortunately when the whole village had already gone to sleep. It's the 7th career ATM victory for Onifa, which is one fewer than Hisashi Kitamura's eight wins.

Two weeks after comfortably winning MUSPO 100 in Philippines, Onifa felt confident from the start and immediately opened up a gap during the first, steep kilometre uphill through the Ban Pha Hee village. The others never saw him again. Young and upcoming talent Thosaeng Kunno - winner of Trail of Man in Chiang Mai six weeks ago - did not resist and focused wisely on his own pace in his first ‘long’ trail race ever. Kunno was joined by Chanil Thanguan and Wanna Sri Ati, with Hungarian Miklos Viczena a bit further back rounding up the top five. The weather conditions deteriorated halfway into the race as rain fell harder down on the forested hills. Wanna Sri Ati was unable to keep the pace up and would eventually DNF, leaving the podium to Kunno and Thanguan. Onifa was unbothered by the slippery conditions and kept running impressively forward, eyeing a sub-10 hour finish. Despite the high pace, it looked like Onifa still had an extra gear left should that have been needed to win the race. He is truly in contention for this year’s ATM Championship title now.

The women’s race was also dominated by one runner: Soingern Teekayu led from start to finish as well. Teekayu is still a relative newbie in trail, and this was her first ATM podium and so also her first ATM race victory. A finish time of just over 18 hours and eighth place overall is certainly a fine statistic for Teekayu.