Although between the two they barely exceed 100 kilos, Aroa Merino and Tinguaro Quintero received no less than 160 liters of excellent wines from the Protected Designation of Origin (DOP) Lanzarote this Sunday as absolute winners of the Wine Race - 80 each - when the scale used to calculate their body weights and deliver their equivalence in liters of wine as a trophy generously shot up, as tradition dictates.
This original award ceremony put the finishing touch to the Lanzarote Wine Run, recovered with enormous success by the Cabildo of Lanzarote, chaired by Oswaldo Betancort, through the Area of Landscape and Food Sovereignty directed by Samuel Martín, and co-organized with the Yaiza City Council and the Regulatory Council in order to raise awareness of the immense environmental value of La Geria, the need for its conservation and the important role played by the island's wine sector in the sustainable development of the Island.
Wine Festival
The event kicked off on Saturday afternoon in Uga with the inauguration of the Wine Festival, which was enjoyed by thousands of people tasting the wines offered by fifteen Lanzarote wineries, the chickpea and goat meat dishes served at the stand of the Art, Culture and Tourism Centers (CACT), directed by Ángel Vázquez, and good and lively live music.
The festival also included the Wine Run Kids, reserved for children, as a prelude to the Wine Race, which in its three modalities - long race of 23 kilometers, and short race and walk of 12 kilometers both - took place this Sunday along the paths of the incomparable natural space of La Geria, shaped by the hand and sweat of thousands of Lanzarote farmers for centuries.
With a time of 1 hour, 30 minutes and 53 seconds, Tinguaro Quintero premiered as the winner of the long race, which had 160 participants and started from Bodegas La Florida. He was escorted on the podium by Tanausú Cabrera (1.32.02) and Juan Gregorio Gopar (1.33.53). Aroa Merino used 1 hour, 36 minutes and 9 seconds to win for the tenth time in her tenth participation. She was followed by Prisca Lepper-Schwarzer (2.00.51) and Yisel González (2.00.58).
The short race, which had 462 participants and started from Finca Testeina - as did the walk that sold out its quota with 1,100 participants - had Rayco Hernández as the male winner (46 minutes and 28 seconds), Agoney Delgado (48.29) and Diego López (49.16). In women, Yasmin Acuña won (58.58), followed by Valeria Borges (1.00.10) and Maike Dohling (1.00.48).
Olivia and Cirilo
A Wine Race developed under the slogan 'Discover. Enjoy. Respect', which had two special participants. On the one hand, the camel Olivia, whose presence through the association of camel drivers of Uga symbolized the essential and invaluable role historically played by the camel in the Lanzarote primary sector.
On the other hand, the dog Cirilo, who participated with his guide Elisa Sanz to accompany users of the Cabildo's Psychosocial Rehabilitation Unit on the route, an initiative of the Social Welfare Area, directed by Marci Acuña, aimed at making the Wine Run an inclusive test and to which the Diver project was added, undertaken so that any person with functional diversity could fully participate in the event.
In this way, the test could also have the category called 'joëlette', the name given to the chair in which several people transport another with functional diversity, and in which it is worth highlighting the participation of two groups from Fuerteventura and El Hierro, who received a strong ovation at the awards ceremony.
Guardians of the territory
Framed in the project 'Save La Geria', the Lanzarote Wine Run had in its Wine Race with a team of volunteers, the so-called "guardians of the territory", who were responsible for ensuring that each path through which the test ran was clean after the passage of the participants. In addition, the Wine Festival had an orange and a violet point of attention prevention of gender violence.
Recovered by the current government group of the Cabildo, after four years without being held, the XII Lanzarote Wine Run was sponsored by the CACT and the collaboration of the Canarian Institute of Agri-food Quality (ICCA), directed by Luis Arráez, the Accessibility and Inclusion Strategy of the Ministry of Social Welfare as well as the Lanzarote and Chinijo Archipelago World Geopark.
