Meladee IgamenPress ReleaseRTL CBS Asia Entertainment NetworkSpartan raceSpartan Ultimate Team ChallengeTV SeriesWheng Dichoso
Women of Sparta: Filipinas Rise Above the World's Most Brutal Race
Through mud, sweat, and pain—anyone who has
participated in a Spartan Race can attest to the strength, skill, and willpower
needed to outmatch the obstacle race. But for Filipina Spartans Meladee Igamen
and Wheng Dichoso, the challenges they were made to face proved worth all the
beating as their inner warrior was unleashed.
Meladee Igamen moved to Singapore to pursue a career in
an IT firm. Her first year of living away from family didn’t come without difficulties,
and life in an unfamiliar city meant that she had to become strong to look
after herself.
In early 2015, she saw on television that an actor had
participated in a Spartan Race. Finding out online that the race would be
coming to Singapore, she signed up for an outdoor boot camp—a high-intensity fitness
program designed to hone strength, balance, flexibility, mobility, agility, stamina,
and teamwork through group workouts.
It was this training experience with the Lion City
Spartans that helped build not only her physical capabilities, but also her
courage and determination to take on the coming challenge. “Since then I became a part of the community and
started training with them,” Igamen said. “I felt I was never alone and that
I’m part of the family.”
Igamen competed in Singapore’s inaugural Spartan Race,
the 2015 Singapore Spartan SPRINT, which consisted of tough obstacles including
wall climbs, sandbag carries, and rope pulls. For her first Spartan event,
Igamen finished fourth among female participants under the team category. She
would run once again in succeeding Spartan Races the following year in Singapore,
Malaysia, Australia, and Indonesia.
Wheng Dichoso, like Igamen, moved to Singapore to work
in a multinational company. She is an active member of badminton and volleyball
teams, as well as a photography group that shoots almost all running events in
Singapore. For her, living an active lifestyle isn’t exactly new.
Dichoso learned about the inaugural Spartan Race in
2015 from ads in Singapore. She then signed up thinking that the event looked
fun. The race would surely put her athletic skill to the test, but she still
took Spartan Workouts at her gym to ready herself.
After her first Spartan experience, she decided to attend
a mass workout program conducted by Spartan Race CEO Joe De Sena. There, she
became acquainted with the Lion City Spartans, and realized that she would need
more intense training to progress in the race.
“They were very loud and encouraged one another,”
Dichoso said. “I decided to look for them on Facebook and immediately joined
the group.”
She joined her first boot camp in February 2016 and made
friends with fellow “fitness freaks” whom she enjoyed training and racing with.
Together with her new group, Dichoso became better prepared to compete in
Spartan events held in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, earning her a 2x
Trifecta medal.
Meladee Igamen and Wheng Dichoso have
proven themselves capable of surmounting even the most arduous tasks, but the
two Filipinas also tell us a very important lesson: It’s only through great perseverance
that people can discover their truest potential.
Similar to the
experiences of these women, the American competition series Spartan: Ultimate Team Challenge will
showcase an obstacle course only hardened athletes can dare to overcome.
Composed of two men,
two women, and an elite Spartan athlete, different teams compete against each
other in one of the world’s most gruelling sporting events—a brutal one-mile
race designed to test the very limits of the human mettle.
Catch the premiere
of Spartan: Ultimate Team Challenge
on April 22, Saturday, 9:35PM, first and
exclusive on RTL CBS
Extreme.
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