China News Service, Tai'an, September 6 (Reporter Liang Ben) The starting ceremony of the 2026 40th Taishan International Mountaineering Competition and the 31st National Fitness Taishan Hiking Event was held on the 6th at the playground of Tai'an Forest School, Shandong. 3,500 professional runners and 9,500 sports enthusiasts from home and abroad gathered at the foot of Mount Tai to pursue competition.
After fierce competition, Kenyan Peter Kiprop Kosgei won the youth men's championship with a time of 1 hour, 03 minutes and 39 seconds. The youth women's championship was won by Tang Hongfang from Hangzhou, Zhejiang, with a time of 1 hour, 18 minutes and 05 seconds.
At 8:30 a.m. that day, after the starting gun sounded, athletes from the professional group set off first, followed by the national fitness group. This competition has four categories. On the basis of continuing the youth group, middle-aged group and senior group, a new college student group has been added. Each category has two events for men and women, and the participating age range is from 18 to 65 years old. Each group starts from the forest school playground, then proceeds north along Hongmen Road, passing through Daizongfang and Hongmen into the mountains. Among them, the elderly group ends at Zhongtianmen, with a total distance of about 5.1 kilometers; the middle-aged group ends at Nantianmen, with a total distance of about 7.8 kilometers; the youth and college student groups end at Yuhuangding, with a total distance of about 8.6 kilometers.
Peter Kiprop Kosgei said after the race that the Taishan track is extremely challenging and a great test for the physical fitness and endurance of the participants. When he came to Tai'an for the first time, he admired the beauty of the city and the majestic Mount Tai, and looked forward to fighting again next year.
Gao Lingkang, a college student from Hubei, climbed Mount Tai for the first time and participated in a mountaineering competition. He won the first place in the college men's group with a time of 1 hour, 13 minutes and 55 seconds. He admitted that the experience of mountain climbing events was completely different from the running events he had participated in before. The cheers and shouts of tourists and volunteers along the way gave me great motivation, and the beautiful scenery of Mount Tai also made the whole race particularly unforgettable.
As a major upgrade for the 40th anniversary of the event, this mountaineering competition comprehensively iterated on digital services, reconstructed and upgraded the event applet, and integrated core functions such as "event registration, information inquiry, results inquiry, live broadcast of photos during the event, 40th anniversary review, and news information." Among them, the photo live broadcast is equipped with AI face recognition technology to facilitate players to quickly find their own track moments; the 40th anniversary exclusive area integrates the highlights of previous events, so players and citizens can review the 40-year event history at any time, greatly improving the participation experience and digital competition level.
It is understood that the Taishan International Mountaineering Festival, founded in 1987, is China's first comprehensive festival with mountaineering as the core and integrating sports, culture, economy and trade. It has won many honors such as "National Sports Tourism Premium Event" and "China's Top Ten Sports Tourism Premium Events". This year's Mountaineering Festival closely follows the city brand of "China Taishan, Guotai and People's Peace", and carefully creates three major sections: culture and tourism, sports, and economy and trade, and 10 theme activities, building a high-quality platform for popularizing national fitness, in-depth integration of culture and tourism, and empowering urban economy and trade.
During the event, Daibei Cultural Plaza simultaneously opened the Mountaineering Outdoor Sports Carnival, creating three special exhibition areas: mountaineering cultural theme exhibition, outdoor sports interactive experience, and sports outdoor market. It enriched the event scene with diverse activities and created a strong national sports atmosphere. Today, after 40 years of development, the Taishan International Mountaineering Festival has become an important window for inheriting Taishan culture, empowering industrial upgrading, displaying Tai'an's cityscape, and promoting national fitness.
