Tagaytay ready for Asian cycling tilt

More than 600 bets from 16 Asian countries seek top honors when the 45th Asian Cycling Confederation (ACC) Track Championships and 14th Asian Para Track Cycling Championships unfurl Wednesday in Tagaytay City.

ACC president Dato' Amarjit Singh Gill and Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) chairman Patrick Gregorio lead a list of distinguished sports officials during the inaugurals at the Tagaytay CT Velodrome.

Philippine Olympic Committee president Abaham Tolentino will join Gill and Gregorio in opening the championships that the country is hosting for the first time since the 1995 edition of the annual event at the brand-new venue — a UCI-standard 250-meter indoor track facility.

“This is the biggest international track cycling event that Tagaytay City, and the country for that matter, is hosting in three decades,” said Tolentino, also the president of the national sports association of cycling, PhilCycling.

The opening ceremony is set at 9 a.m. and the first event starts at 10 a.m.

Mayor Brent Tolentino of host Tagaytay City is supporting the championships along with the PSC, MVP Sports Foundation, Sports Plus PH, Toyota and Peak.

The Asian championships offer 44 gold medals, while 30 golds are staked in the para track competitions that will be held simultaneously until 31 March.

Competitions in the ACC championships will be in individual and team pursuit, sprint, keirin, elimination race, omnium, points race, scratch race, Madison and 1-kilometer for both men and women categories.

The events in the para track cycling competitions are the individual pursuit, 1,000 meters time trial, sprint, elimination, scratch race and mixed team and tandem sprints.

The participating countries are Chinese-Taipei, Hong Kong-China, Indonesia, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, Macao-China, Malaysia, China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and host Philippines.