The Don Ramon Durano Sr. Memorial Sports Complex in Danao City, Cebu is pretty much like every other sports facility in the country.
But its claim to fame is that it is one of the venues for the 2005 SEA Games, specifically the mountain biking event. Fortunately,
the Philippines won two golds there, one for the mens downhill category and another for the womens cross-country (Vietnam and Indonesia bagged the
two other golds).
Well, upon seeing the track and field of the sports complex (see this articles thumbnail), I wondered how the heck are you supposed to do mountain
biking on the track? It seems that the biking probably either happened beyond the track on what looks like mounds of white/gray sand to the
west or at the field in the middle of the track. The downhill category probably happened along the white sinuous road farther off to the north and
west of the site.
The sports complex, part of the Cebu State College of Science and Technology, also hosted the Southeast Asian Mountainbike Championships in 2004, in which Filipinos also made an impressive showing. That event’s success was most likely a factor into why the Danao facility was selected for the SEA Games.
Anyway, Don Ramon Durano Sr. is a patriarch of Danao. If that surname seems familiar, its because the Don was the great-grandfather of Tourism secretary
and former Cebu congressman Joseph Ace Durano, who was one of the youngest people ever to be elected to the House of Representatives.
I assume that the Don is the great-grandfather because Ace Duranos father is named Ramon Durano III
