11th ATM win for Ruth Theresia while Simanjuntak confirms his talent

The 3rd Bukit Lawang Orang Utan Trail in North Sumatra once again proved the depth of young trail running talent on the large Indonesian island. A clean sweep on the men’s 50k podium for local runners with Erwin Simanjuntak scoring his second consecutive race win in Bukit Lawang and even in a more impressive style than a year ago. In the women’s 50k it was wonderful to see our popular 2018 ATM Champion Ruth Theresia returning to victory lane after six years and this for the 11th time in her ATM trail journey - a new female record.

Traditional sunny and hot conditions for the race after the previous night’s heavy rainfall. The 50km started earlier than in previous editions at 4:30am, but followed the same pattern with a very runable 20km+ through plantations before the runners went steep up into the rainforest, where they disappeared on tough and often very technical trails. Erwin Simanjuntak, Lindra Mulfanis and Noel Pakpahan were jointly in the lead at that more or less halfway point, and Hong Kong-based Australian David Longo following closely behind. No Andre Sinaga this year, but Mulfanis and Pakpahan replaced him as solid challengers for Simanjuntak. Still, the latter confirmed his amazing talent by outgunning the other two and finishing in 5h47 - no fewer than 20 minutes faster than his own time last year! Lindra Mulfanis arrived in 6h21 as second - a fine result as well for a newbie. For reference, last year Chris Timms ran 6h18 in this race. Noel Pakpahan completed the top 3 shortly afterwards, and then it was David Longo and Slamed Riyadi.

Ruth Theresia on her part was leading the race more or less from start to finish. Her 11th ATM race victory came 5,5 years after her previous one at UT Nan in Thailand, where she secured her championship title at the time. Ruth focused on other objectives after that, and the covid crisis was not kind to her neither. Her comeback was marred by injuries, but this year she had already showed a return to competitive form at the 9 Dragons Hong Kong. By winning Orang Utan Trail she scored her wild card for this season’s ATM Final at Borneo TMBT in September, and she took the lead in the all-time female victory list. She now has 1 ATM race win more than Malaysia’s Tahira Najmunisaa, now mainly a duathlete, and four more than Australia’s Kim Matthews and Slovakia’s Veronika Vadovicova.

2018 ATM Champion Ruth Theresia had to wait 6 years to add an 11th race victory to her record

Lindra Mulfanis is a great young newcomer on the ATM scene with a second place

For David Longo, fourth was the highest achievable in Bukit Lawang