MVA: Saipan to host XTERRA again

After three years of hosting the XTERRA Saipan Championship, the management team at the Marianas Visitors Authority likes what it has seen, and is just a few formalities away from finalizing a deal to bring the event back.

MVA Managing Director Jonas Ogren said in an interview yesterday that the planning has been underway and the dates for next year have already been selected.

“In the next couple of weeks it should be done. It’s just a matter of putting an agreement together in black and white. It’s actually already done, we just need to fine tune a couple of things so we can sign off on it,” Ogren said.

The MVA has been communicating with Taga Inc. regarding the dates for the 16th running of the Tagaman Triathlon, and scheduling events that will be part of the 2nd Annual Saipan Sports Fest. Next year, the hope is to add more sporting events to the sports fest to enhance the image of Saipan as an active destination.

In 2005, the plan is very similar this year’s event due to the success of having both races on back-to-back weekends.

“It was a huge success. Having the two events together was definitely a huge success. We were kind of worried about the amount of people that would stay to do both events, but we saw a lot of people that did compete in both events. There were a total of 30 people, five to 10 of which were professionals. The pros stayed 10 days in Saipan and we got a lot of media coverage out of it,” said Ogren

In about two weeks, some of the fruits of the media coverage will come to bare as Sports Illustrated will be running an article from one of their writers that competed in the XTERRA.

Ogren explained the importance of getting a deal secured with the race organizers so that they can promote Saipan’s race early. He said that Saipan is already known as the jewel of XTERRA’s global tour and that organizers talk it up at all of their events.

“That’s why we want to put this out now, so they can hype it up, because without the commitment, they can’t. They don’t want to promise anything that they can’t deliver.”

Since the first race on Saipan in 2001, the XTERRA Saipan Championship has tripled the amount of entrants, improving every year.

“It’s literally one of the success stories…it’s gotten better and better every year and there’s no reason why that trend is not going to continue. It’s (organized by) the same group of people,” said Ogren.

If it were up to Ogren to decide, the race would be run in Saipan as long as there are XTERRA events.

“It is a powerful event. It gives us a lot of exposure globally, and recently, with the addition of XTERRA Japan, it will reach our core markets as well.”