{"id":10256,"date":"2011-12-30T06:13:27","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T06:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newspaper.ctsi-logistics.com\/?p=10256"},"modified":"2011-12-30T06:13:27","modified_gmt":"2011-12-30T06:13:27","slug":"2011-saipan-sportsfest-pushes-through","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/2011-saipan-sportsfest-pushes-through\/","title":{"rendered":"2011 Saipan Sportsfest pushes through"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>By Roselyn Monroyo<br \/>\nReporter<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-width: 0px;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/imgupload\/issx9999ns115344.jpg\" alt=\"Sam Gardner runs along the shore at Micro Beach after completing the first lap of the swim race during the 2011 XTERRA Saipan Championships in March.  (Roselyn B. Monroyo)\" width=\"67\" height=\"100\" border=\"0\" \/>\u00a0The 2011 Saipan Sportsfest that featured the XTERRA Saipan Championship and Tagaman Triathlon went ahead as scheduled in March despite a tsunami threat.<\/p>\n<p>The XTERRA Saipan Championship was held a day after Japan was struck by a tsunami and earthquake. A tsunami warning was issued on Saipan Friday afternoon, March 11, canceling the XTERRA Trail Run.<\/p>\n<p>The following day, despite fear of the water, swimmers plunged into action at Micro Beach and offered prayers for the victims of the disasters in Japan before the race started.<\/p>\n<p>United Kingdom&#8217;s Sam Gardner and American Shonny Vanlandingham went on to win the men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s division races, respectively. Gardner battled food poisoning en route to his third straight victory in the Crown Jewel of XTERRA. Vanlandingham won for the first time and ended Renata Bucher&#8217;s six-year reign. Bucher dropped to third behind the XTERRA Saipan newcomer and eventual runner-up Carina Wasle of Austria.<\/p>\n<p>The 2011 Saipan Sportsfest was completed with the staging of Tagaman Triathlon, which still drew a crowd despite a couple of withdrawals from Japanese athletes affected by the tsunami.<\/p>\n<p>Again, Gardner went through a tough fight before winning. He recovered from a slow start in the swim leg against the faster and younger Korean contingent, survived a bike crash, and ran to the finish line bleeding and bruised.<\/p>\n<p>In the women&#8217;s division U.S. pro Suzie Snyder pulled off an upset over Bucher, Wasle, and 2010 champion Dan Bi Hong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Roselyn Monroyo Reporter \u00a0The 2011 Saipan Sportsfest that featured the XTERRA Saipan Championship and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}