The weekend of the 16th edition of the Pan CagliariRespira-15th Memorial Delio Serra is just around the corner and the number of participants is approaching 2,500, which in 2023 has allowed it to be the most attended event in the Sardinian running and sporting panorama in terms of the number of athletes present in a single event.
Just under a thousand have already registered for the international half marathon Città di Cagliari, which will compete on the course designed by the Cagliari Marathon club over 21.097km. Athletes from fifteen nations are at the start, with Italy leading the way, followed by Norway, Great Britain, San Marino, Ukraine, Gambia, Belgium, Holland, Romania, Algeria, Germany, the United States, Colombia, Poland and Slovakia.
The participants in the race come from all over Sardinia, but also from thirteen other Italian provinces, from Rome to Milan, from Padua to Bari. In percentage terms, over 22% of the participants are women and, if the age of the participants is approximately twenty years and up, curiously in the statistics the 52 and 56 year olds stand out in number.
In addition to these, there are over one hundred non-competitive relay teams, each consisting of two athletes, who will run 8 and 13 km respectively, and the thousand participants in the non-competitive 6 km race.
Registration for the KaraliStaffetta and SeiKaralis will still be open throughout Saturday, while the KidsRun will take place in the early afternoon tomorrow, in the spaces of the Fair, with around 200 children taking part in the various races.
At 7 pm tomorrow, the top runners of the race will be presented. Among them, the Kenyan Simon Kibet Loitanyang and the Moroccan Khalid Jbari , respectively first and second in 2023, Ismail El Haissoufi, Rachid Benhamdane and the Sardinian Claudio Solla , among the best representatives of the Island and standard-bearers of the organizing club. And when among the countless titles put in the showcase in his career there are also eight successes at CagliariRespira, talking about repeating becomes reductive.
Among the women, Claudia Pinna of Cus Cagliari (a university association that in this edition collaborated with the Cagliari Marathon club in organizing the event) remains the favorite. Competing for the title, among others, Elisabetta Orrù.