✳️ How Nations Are Choosing Trail Running’s Best

A Trailmix of news and opinions on the business of Trail Running

Hey pals👋 We had our first flurry of snow in the UK, enough to build a snowman, which for November is pretty decent. I made two articles today, but felt one was too ‘insider baseball’ for most of you to find interesting, so i’ll post it over on LinkedIn tomorrow (you should follow me on there if that’s your jam). Today we have the imbalances in World Mountain and Trail Running Championship selection criterias and a bunch more. Hope you have a great week! - Matt

Different Trails, Same Goal: The Challenge of World Championship Qualifiers

What? Over the past couple of months, the US, Canadian, and UK national athletics agencies have begun releasing their qualification criteria and races for next year’s World Mountain and Trail Running Championships. Each is grappling with the challenge of selecting the best athletes given their available resources, geography, and timelines—leading to vastly different solutions.

Where? The 2025 World Mountain and Trail Running Championships will be held in Canfranc, a small mountain town in north-eastern Spain, known for its jagged peaks, dense pine forests and titanic art deco train station.

There will be various events from punchy up-down mountain running events to short (24km) and long (80km) trail events.

Selection: To select the most capable of athletes, national athletics agencies have tried to balance the terrain, sharpness of ascents and distance in their qualifying races held in their own country.

The balance has proven to be tricky with races in the US and UK coming up either too short or not mountainous enough.

In the UK, Apex Running’s 14 Peaks Ultra in Eryri was chosen for the long trail qualifier, despite being only 52km.

In the US, Gorge Waterfalls 100km was chosen by USATF as the long trail qualifier despite being 20km too long, set 5 months out from the championships in September and not close to the technicality or profile of the course in Canfranc. This drew criticism from Jason Schlarb on Instagram that it would admit the wrong kind of runner and set the country up to fail.

Angela Mudge, National Endurance Manager for Scottish Athletics, explained in an email that although 14 Peaks Ultra is a shorter distance “it has a similar climb to the championship and will demonstrate an athlete’s ability to be in the mountains”. British Athletics has also taken into consideration that “many trail runners in the UK perform well over long hilly trail races (such as the South Downs Ultra) but their legs do not have the conditioning for the long climbs and descents which will be required in Canfranc”.

Additionally, with the World Championships fast approaching, the selectors needed to choose a race that was held within a few months of the competition. With the championships in September, the 14 Peaks race gives athletes 3 months to prepare and allows for a selection of athletes close to the peak of the season.

Conversely Canada chose the August 2024 Squamish 50/50 event as their short and long trail qualifiers, meaning most top athletes in those categories have already qualified.

Angela also added that the option of holding a bespoke event was not an option for the UK as resources were not available.

Whilst the qualifying event aids in the selection process, it is not the only factor selectors will take into consideration. Canada, US and UK also have fitness, doping, and in-season performance credentials that also are considered.

Matt’s opinion: These mismatched qualifiers are emblematic of the state of international competition in trail running right now. The sport, for all its grassroots charm and rugged appeal, is still finding its footing as a professional discipline. Unlike more established sports, trail running lacks a unified framework for global competition. National agencies are left to make do with the resources, geography, and race calendars available to them, often at the expense of fairness or specificity. The result? A world championship qualification process that feels more like a patchwork of compromises than a cohesive system.

Most sports have a severe inequality in funding and resources at an international level. That’s almost a given. Take when England vs Fiji play in a rugby match, England players are paid £25K per match (some with a bonus £163K centralised contract) and Fiji players are paid $500, that’s if they can afford the flights and baggage, which they couldn’t afford this summer. But trail running has a unique imbalance – geography.

All countries have varying topographies and terrain, some more mountainous than others. These landscapes keep the international race calendar exciting but grant some athletes who have easier access to trails and vertiginous terrain an unfair advantage over those that don’t. Angela’s comment on British athletes’ strengths and the landscape’s weakness’ are case in point.

Considering the recent upsurge in Olympic conversations, these regional disparities are only going to become starker. For any athlete to compete on the international stage, they must travel. Which for a sport where the average athlete salary is less than the average national wage, is not entirely plausible. And I’ve only talked about western countries in this article.

There are ways to alleviate this. An international body could provide baseline guidelines, helping countries align their qualifiers with the championship’s demands. Collaborative regional qualifiers, particularly in Europe or North America, could ease financial and logistical strain for countries while providing more standardised competition.

Trail running thrives on its unpredictability, but in its qualification process, this variability threatens to undermine the sport’s integrity on the world stage. The path to Canfranc, much like trail running itself, should be challenging—but it shouldn’t be a different journey depending on where you start.

If we had a group chat we would chat about:

• I couldn’t make it to the Running Event in Austin, Texas this year, but from the looks of it, we’re in for a bumper year of foamy shoe times. Everyone seemingly supersized the depth of foam on their footwear, making some look like platform stompers. Check out RoadTrailRun’s Instagram for what we’re in store for.  LinkedIn was awash with vanilla takes (“The energy in running is palpable!” Please, pull yourself together.), so I’m waiting for some actual insight/tea to what went down outside of shoe reveals.

• Bandit just keep hitting it out the park with their creative campaigns. What I love about their Winter campaign is the back story itself. Always here for more behind-the-scenes work.

• UTMB’s little race tracking company LiveTrail has released more stats for its livestream dashboard, but I’m still waiting for when we get GPS tracking and heart rate monitoring at UTMB, like how the Professional Triathlon Organisation track their races.

• Women’s Trail Fund announced its first grants with a total of $25K available to fund “individual, media, event, and community initiatives that elevate women by sharing their stories and lowering the barriers to entry”. Would love to see our Trail Running media publishers publicise some of the winners.

• La Sportiva have taken over the title sponsorship of the Cirque Series, the short trail competitive series in the US, from On.

• There’s always UTMB news, so here’s the basics:

  • Ultra-Trail Australia is the newest UTMB World Series Major representing Oceania on their grand stage.

  • UTMB have dropped Puerto Vallarta from the UTMB World Series.