28// What did WMTRC tell us about how trail running works?

On World Athletic’s foray into MUT

Hey pals,

Well the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships (WMTRC) crept up on me. It’s fair to say it was more exciting than a lot of people were anticipating.

What was interesting about the whole affair is what it revealed about the broader picture of World Athletics in trail running and the role of our many governing bodies. Maybe I’ve been watching too much Succession, but the event seemed to highlight the dynamics that are happening at the top of the sport.

So this weeks newsletter is on that and other observations around the event.

Hope you have a great weekend :)

Matt

Alone, ITRA/IAU/WMRA have little influence in their respective sports

When i wrote about the power struggle in trail running earlier in the year, I didn’t mention ITRA or any other MUT governing body, largely because their role in the sport is minute.

Question: If ITRA/IAU/WMRA didn’t exist, would the sport’s values decline? Would participation decline? Discuss.

Each organisation exists to govern their sport by implement policies, increasing participation and increasing revenue for the sport.

It’s not clear from any of their websites how they plan on doing that, or have demonstrated that they’ve made any impact along those lines.

In the short time that the Trail Runners Association has been around they’ve made a more notable impact on the sport than ITRA has in the past 10 years.

WMTRC served as a reminder that these organisations exist. Whether the sport needs them is another question.

Which leads me onto…

The WMTRC serves World Athletic’s agenda more than it does each constituent’s plans.

As Sarah Rowell, World Mountain Running Association council member and treasurer, laid out, the WMTRC followed the template of a World Athletic event by rule book, format, tender process, and media coverage. It’s even called the IAAF World Mountain and Trail Running Championships.

The event is held biannually to fit in with World Athletics plans to have alternating road and off-road world championships.

It offers World Athletics a foothold in a burgeoning market without paying for a team to develop that arm of the business. They get to trial formats, discover sponsorship interests and assess media rights value, with minimal outlay.

The events are co-organised by the MUT trio, whilst World Athletics rakes in the 180K euros from the host city (there is no mention of profit sharing in any documents, but lets hope there is).

Sure, the races serve the purpose of inspiring more people to participate giving each organisation some metrics to add to their annual reports (maybe even a bump in membership revenue). Long term, World Athletics is the real winner here.

There is a limit to shoe brand’s influence on race depth

Abby Levine laid out the case for the WMTRC earlier on this week, but lamented that shoe brands were not incentivising athletes to compete at the event, according to her sources. Tom Evans reinforced this claim by stating UK Athletics doesn’t supply enough funding for it to be financially worth it to go.

Regardless, the money issues weren’t evident in any of the competitions. The depth of competitors was the best we’ve seen this year.

Is the draw of ‘world champion as sanctioned by the World Athletics not UTMB or GTWS’ a pull for athletes even if it doesn’t pay as well? I couldn’t find the total prize money in any press reports, but when the event budget was 4.6M euros, you’d hope the prize money would be semi-decent and played a part in making it a worthwhile investment to travel.

Some other observations

- Volkswagen R, their performance range, was the premier sponsor - the second car company to have a major sponsorship in trail running event after Dacia and UTMB. Are Trail Runners also car enthusiasts?

- To give the livestream the impression that there was lots of fans at the event, the organisers incentivised groups of people to become ‘cheer crews’ to show their support to racers. Forced celebrations reminds me of the crowds that gather when Kim Jong-Un has his military parade.

- it’s very easy to imagine trail running at the Olympics after this week’s events. Janet Ng, head of ITRA, was keen to say it wasn’t on their mind, but it surely will be on World Athletic’s mind when half of their income last year came from the Olympics Dividend, a stipend the Olympics gives away to sports federations to sustain their sports in the intervening years between Olympics.