RAK Half Marathon, one of the Middle East's highest accredited road race, said it has re-launched the official event website with an Arabic version to give the event a local flavour in Ras Al Khaimah.

Nathan Clayton, race director and managing director of Premier Marathons, the race organisers, said, 'We felt it was time that this event took on more of a local flavor and involved more of the population as a whole and not just the English speaking community.'

'Whilst the majority of runners are expats and English speaking we also recognize that Ras Al Khaimah's population has a much higher percentage of UAE nationals than some other emirates and this is after all a community event,' he noted.

'In addition we are beginning to witness higher numbers of visitors from surrounding Arab countries, both on the website and participating in the race and it is important for us as race organizers that we can provide as much information as possible in as clear a manner as possible - this will benefit everyone involved in the event,' Clayton added.

With its new elevated status as an IAAF Silver Label Race a bi-lingual website has been on the list of requirements of the labeling system which encourages races to promote their events in an endeavor to achieve as wide an audience as possible.

With the RAK Half Marathon as a key player in the promotion of Ras Al Khaimah on a local, regional and international level, components of the race such as an English/Arabic website begin to play an all important part of taking the event to a higher level and furthering the vision of the event by its Patron, the Crown Prince.

With a long term plan of development being put in place, Race organizers indicate such developments are just the beginning.

'We are aware that some people may think that a world record time in year one may be hard to follow up but we are confident that like the emirate itself, the RAK Half Marathon has a lot of undiscovered potential still to come.'
 
The RAK Half Marathon 2009 is presented by Saqr Port and supported by TNT and is an IAAF Silver Label Race, a full member of the Association of Marathons and Distance Running (AIMS) and is sanctioned by the UAE Athletics Federation.

For registration information and to know more about the race itself visit www.rakmarathon.org. Registration closes on January 15, 2009.-TradeArabia News Service