Photos Courtesy of SPRG
Text & Layout : Geraldine Teo

Can you tie a sarong, kick a 'capteh', or stick your hand into a bucket of worms?

These are important skills - if you want to win a race as crazy and fun as the City Chase series.

This July, Singapore became the first city in Asia to host the City Chase, a unique urban adventure race that tests both your mental and physical boundaries. It was also THE biggest turnout for a debut City Chase race in any country, with 142 teams of two participating.

"As a vibrant, multicultural and cosmopolitan city, Singapore is a perfect example of what City Chase hopes to represent and exemplify," said Nick Jelinek, the founder of City Chase.

A broad spectrum of activities is one of the characteristics that sets the City Chase apart from other adventure races, and in Singapore, some of the challenges reflecting our rich multicultural heritage included tying a sarong, kicking a 'capteh', and making a traditional Indian garland. There were also some nasty ones, obviously fashioned to test your "fear factor", like digging into a container of worms to find matching mahjong tiles.

Winning Singapore's – and Asia's - first ever City Chase, were the Gaelic TaiGers who crossed the finish line in 4 hours and 4 minutes.

"We found the race very challenging but we had great help from friends. Finding locations was the hardest part. We used the MRT most of the time and our strategy was to go to the furthest ChasePoint first which was Kent Ridge, then make our way back," said one half of the team, Taissa Matla, 34, a Singapore PR who’s lived here for seven years.

She and teammate Gerald Brogan, 32, an Irish expatriate, are the first mixed team ever to make it to the World Championships, in Rome from September 27 – 30. They will compete in the race of a lifetime against other teams from Sydney, Lisbon, Paris, Madrid, London, Hong Kong, Chicago and Canada.

And for the rest of us armchair City Chasers, no need to break a sweat or eat or do anything weird, if we still want to catch the race. Four one-hour TV programmes will be televised worldwide on the National Geographic, after the World Championships in September, so you can always try to catch that instead.

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