The world’s best tower runners will be eagerly lacing up their running shoes come Friday, 27 January 2017, as they take to the stairs for the ‘Climb to Abu Dhabi Vertical Marathon/Tower Race’.

50 international tower runners will make the journey to the country’s capital to compete for the inaugural title, being presented by Daman’s ActiveLife at the iconic Etihad Towers Abu Dhabi.

The race will see a sell out across the community too. Brand Ambassador of the event and current World Champion, Piotr Lobodzinski, was delighted with the participation news and said the ‘Climb to Abu Dhabi’ has had a phenomenal response in its inaugural year, with runners coming from as far as Canada, Australia and China.

The event, an initiative of the Abu Dhabi Sports Council, will see more than 700 participants climb 82 floors/1,617 steps or 32 floors/720 steps across 6 race categories, with a total prize pool of USD 25,000 up for grabs.

Hamad Al Mehyas, chief process officer at Daman, commented: “We are delighted to take part in Climb to Abu Dhabi. We continuously aim to provide a number of activity platforms for different fitness levels and support the drive for fitness in our journey to create healthy communities.”

Richard Foulds, head of property management at Etihad Towers, said: “On behalf of Shaikh Suroor Bin Mohammed Al Nahyan, we are pleased to be able to host the 2017 ‘Climb to Abu Dhabi Vertical Marathon’ at Etihad Towers in conjunction with Abu Dhabi’s sports council, Daman Health Insurance and of course our hotel partners Jumeirah Group”.

This year’s event happily co-indices with the 5th anniversary of the opening of Etihad Towers, which remains the largest mixed use development in Abu Dhabi.

Tower 2, where this year’s main event is taking place, is one of three residential towers, measuring 310m in height and remains one of the tallest iconic residential towers in Abu Dhabi, having starred in last year’s blockbuster movie Fast & Furious 7 and placing Etihad Towers firmly on the international stage of high rise developments globally.

An exhibition race in 2017 under the sanctioning of the World Tower Running Association, the Climb to Abu Dhabi is also the first destination city for the newly formed Climb to Vertical Series, which will see cities from the Mena region take part in a Mena vertical series to launch in 2018.

Further details including race day information, training programmes and partners are available on www.climbtoabudhabi.com