Bloomberg L.P.’s famed Square Mile Relay global series has passed the baton on to Shanghai on Sept. 22. Twenty faculty members, students and staff from Duke Kunshan University formed two teams to race against more than 70 corporate teams consisting of 10 runners in the Bloomberg Square Mile Relay in Shanghai. Duke Kunshan’s Team Blue won an honorable 4th place and Team Green finished the relay in 27th place.
Sportsmanship is alive and kicking
At the sound of the starter’s pistol, around 800 relay runners were unleashed into the busy Lujiazui Financial District in downtown Shanghai, kicking off the annual sports party for the financial community and sports lovers worldwide. After only 1 hour, 4 minutes and 53 seconds, the anchor leg of Duke Kunshan’s Team Blue crossed the finish line in the fourth position, breaking the university’s record set last year.
Too fast to be caught by the camera
‘We didn’t know what the race track looked like, but we all did a really great job,’ said Henry Stuckenschimidt, the first leg of Team Blue and a Global Learning Semester student from Duke Kunshan University. ‘We have learned a lot from the race as well as the training. Our coach Patrick Moreton taught us to be comfortable with ourselves so that we don’t look at other people when we are running, which is very inspiring.’
Besides Duke Kunshan University, the relay race also featured teams from Shanghai’s biggest businesses, including Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered, Macquarie and Citi. Each corporate team has 10 runners, all of whom will run a unique one mile course through the heart of the City.
The team from Nanhua Futures won the championship and donated the prize money to Habitat for Humanity, an NGO devoted to poverty housing issues all over the world. Duke Kunshan University also contributed to the socially responsible goals of the race through promoting healthy lifestyle habits and sportsmanship.
‘We started with very few people, but now we have really come together into a great team, where everybody has been very supportive of each other. For me, this is one of the most enriching coaching experience,’ said Dr. Patrick Moreton, the Coach M behind the success of Team Duke Kunshan, and the university’s associate dean for graduate programs and conference center programming. ‘Participating in the Relay has a very positive impact on the Duke Kunshan community, too. It is great to see people from all parts of the school – students, faculty, and staff from different departments – working together and supporting each other.’
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The annual Bloomberg Square Mile Relay has been a huge success since its launch in London in 2007, expanding in recent years to Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, with more than 100 teams entering the relay race at each location every year.
