Ruta Maya race is weekend after election
While all eyes may be focussed on next month’s elections, the long weekend following March fifth will feature one of the year’s premier sporting events. Marion Ali has a preview.
Marion Ali, Reporting
Mile after mile, it’s the longest and most challenging water sport in Central America. Each year, its organisers find new ways to make La Ruta Maya canoe race even more exciting.
Roberto Harrison, Sec., La Ruta Maya Bz. River Challenge
“Every year we try to get more innovative with the race, this year we’re adding back, well not adding back, but trying to attract the old paddlers so to speak who started the race using aluminium canoes and plastic canoes. Two, we’ll be adding an intramural class, realizing that high schools are competing with each other, so we want to put them in a class by themselves where they can compete with themselves.”
According to the race’s secretary, Roberto Harrison, the Macal River has never looked better.
Roberto Harrison
“The river over the years has been worked on by these environmental groups. They tell us that the work they’ve been doing–the river is more or less in a better state than it was a couple years ago. They’ve been able to clean the banks with debris, garbage, they’ve been working along the Haulover Creek.”
The race starts at 7:00 on the morning of March seventh at the Hawkesworth Bridge in San Ignacio and travels down the Macal River, with overnight stops at Banana Bank, Bermudian Landing, and Burrell Boom before its completion at the Belcan Bridge on March tenth. This year’s finish promises more fun for spectators and more cash for paddlers.
Roberto Harrison
“It’s there that we give out the forty thousand or so dollars worth of prize that we have been able to put together. A fair goes on there, there’s the pit-pan races that we’re trying to organize, there’s the greasy pole that we’re trying to put together, so it should be a fun-packed day for people of Belize City and the country as a whole.”
Categories for the race include: all male, all female, mixed groups, the Master’s category for paddlers over forty years, the dory category, and the professionals, most of whom begin training for the next year the day after the race finishes.
Marion Ali for News 5.
The 2002 defending Ruta Maya champion is the team sponsored by Koop Sheet Metal. This year a number of teams have changed sponsorship, and with more high-tech canoes being built, the competition is expected to be especially keen. Around a hundred boats across all categories will respond to the starter’s pistol at dawn on March seventh.
