The WAA 360º is approaching and soon the unknowns of an event of these characteristics will be cleared. San Sebastián de La Gomera will host for the first time this titanic challenge at the end of November, in which the participants will face an island that will not make things easy for them. The route, still secret, will be revealed a few days before the start of the race.
What is already a reality is part of the list of athletes who will lead the bets of this adventure. Among those who have already confirmed their participation is the Italian runner Luca Papi, a true icon in this type of challenges, and who year after year adds more kilometers than anyone else in competition. The brave ultra-distance runner has already won three titles in the five editions of the 360º, to which must be added a third and a fourth place in his other two participations. The WAA team runner will land in La Gomera after winning for the second consecutive year in Tor des Glaciers, a 450-kilometer race in the Aosta Valley.
Another of the names to follow will be Anita Lehmann. The Swiss is the great dominator of the reference event in her country, the SwissPeaks Trail, of which she has won three times in the 360 km event. Lehmann will be one of the main candidates for victory with Claire Bannwarth, who has already demonstrated this year that she dominates distances longer than 100 miles with victories in the 360º, Cami de Cavalls, Ultra 01 or the Portugal 281 Ultramarathon, a race in which she also won the overall absolute category.
The list of favourites from abroad increases with runners like the veteran Patrick Bohard, a champion of the Tor des Geants and the SwissPeak Trail, who will finish his season running the trails of La Gomera, the Italian Marco Gubert, an athlete who made a surprise in the last 360º in which he dominated with authority the race from the beginning in Tenerife to the end in Maspalomas, or Goshi Osada, the young Japanese ultra-distance runner who will start to push from the beginning to sell the race at a very high price.
They will be just a part of the representation of athletes who have accepted a historic challenge, the first time that the WAA 360º will be held in its entirety out of Gran Canaria. And it will be in La Gomera, a paradise for mountain lovers, in a race organized by Arista Eventos and Gomesport Eventos, and sponsored by the City Council of San Sebastián de La Gomera, the Cabildo de La Gomera, WAA and Fred. Olsen Express.