The Athlete-Authored Era

The rise of athlete content creators in trail running

Hey pals,

After three years of writing this newsletter from my small desk in Cardiff, with a few trips to Chamonix in between, Trailmix is finally going to the US! And more excitingly, I’ll be moderating a panel at Trailcon! Pretty flabbergasted and honoured to be on the same stage that so many trail running icons will speaking on over those two days in Tahoe. If you’re going Trailcon this year, reply to this email, would love to see as many of you as possible! I’ll also be driving in the US for the first time, so any tips on driving a truck on the other side of the road (and car), let me know 😅

Speaking of independent media - anyone noticed the boom in athletes starting their own Substack, podcasts and YouTubes? I have, and I asked them why they began. Turns out to be different to what i expected.

Hope you all have a fantastic week,

Matt

Media evolves in cycles. First, fragmentation as new voices emerge; then aggregation as someone tries to make sense of the chaos. In ultrarunning those cycles are colliding at once creating a fascinating experiment in how communities tell their own stories when traditional media falls away.

More specifically, the aggregation is being done by Ken Seals who at the end of last year started The Ultra Minute, a newsletter that summarises all the Instagram posts, newsletters and podcasts around specific American races. Ken started because he was frustrated with having to spend hours scrolling through Instagram to gather the full perspective on any race. “One of the major reasons I started TUM (The Ultra Minute) was that taking a break from Instagram felt amazing—but I also lost track of what was happening in the sport. I wanted a quick, weekly read to stay updated, and when I couldn’t find it, I created it.” However as the newsletter has grown, Ken has found it hasn’t exactly decreased his screen time. “Ironically, producing TUM has me on Instagram more than ever, which I don’t love, but if it helps others avoid the doom-scroll, I can justify taking the hit.”

Over the past year keen observers of Ken’s newsletter will also have noted another change in our media ecosystem – the rise of athlete media. Since early 2024 roughly 20 professional trail runners have started their own Substack documenting their training and divulging their thoughts on how a race went. Simultaneously over the past few years athletes have taken to podcasts (think Boulder Boys or Ben Dhiman) and YouTube (a la Callie Vinson and Scott Traer and Rachel Drake and Tyler Green) to add their perspective to the sport. From having a few blogs and news sources, trail running all of a sudden has a morass of media.

Considering the broader trend in other sports of athlete creators who are crafting their own media spaces with lucrative endorsement and sponsorship deals, going into this I thought this was the same motivation for the trail running athletes. Ken agreed, highlighting the state of the industry and the broader employment market. Turns out the reality is more complicated.

After speaking to several athletes, the primary motivation for starting something new was the freedom of creative expression and wanting an outlet to process their experiences outside the confines of Instagram. This is not the rise of the athlete media entrepreneur - It’s something quieter, more personal. It feels closer to a rise of an athlete-authored era.

For many athletes this wave isn't new, they've been writing for a while, but only recently has it become more public. Caleb Olson started his Substack at the end of last year after hearing a Second Nature episode about the platform. "I liked the idea of having a platform where I could start from scratch and not have many followers," he says. The appeal was personal; he wanted to write about intimate topics without the awkwardness of sharing them with his existing Instagram following. His hope was that "the only people who would subscribe were ones who actually were interested in what I was writing about."

The writing practice also brought unexpected benefits to his routine. "Between running and my job as a software developer I sometimes feel like I'm just mindlessly doing the tasks and training activities assigned to me without much of an opportunity to use my brain or creativity."

For Francesco Puppi, who was writing long before Substack existed, the motivation is about filling a gap in the sport itself. "As athletes if we don't tell our story in a sport that is still quite small, who does?" he asks. "We don't have a European Freetrail or IRunFar." When he wins major races or switches sponsors, there's little coverage. "We don't have an organic media talking about the scene, like what's actually happening in the sport. But the demand for these stories is there."

Everyone i spoke to mentioned the limitations of Instagram in helping them get across what they want to say, so these outlets were also a way to free them up to say what they feel. Helen Mino Faukner, began making 20 minutes plus “running rants” on YouTube as a way to develop a new skill but also to communicate her experiences in a way that works better for her. “I think how you say things really matters and that can get lost for me in writing but i think it comes across better when I’m talking.”

No athlete I spoke to mentioned building out ‘their personal brand’ or ‘another revenue stream’ as a core motivation for them, which on paper could be seen as a missed opportunity. Trail running is a bottom-up media ecosystem led by creators with very little traditional media outlets left (anyone notice the Trailrunner website has ceased publishing but it’s ghost keeps posting on Instagram?). Combined with the ease of setting up channels and creating content, there’s an opportunity in broadening their output for more sponsorship and subscription income.

However, the broader context is these athletes have full-time jobs, are not paid enough as an athlete to leave their jobs and don't have a history of producing 'content' with personality at the pace of social media. This is different from other sports who have younger athletes who grew up with social media and whose full-time job is their sport, often with pronounced on-and-off seasons with full-time managers to assist with any IP and media creation. Undoubtably there will be some anomalies (like Dylan with Freetrail), but the athlete entrepreneur is not a reality for all athletes in trail running.

The true value of athletes starting their own initiative is the depth of detail we get from those at the highest level of our sport. Without the typical intermediary of sports journalism, we get the training intel, the background to their lives and candid reflections on the sports development. This transparency allows fans to easily learn about professionals beyond simply what they see in livestreams whilst enriching the narratives around our sport. True, this will never be the full story but a curated look at their lives, but when we’re devoid of journalists even this partial perspective is a gift.

What’s happening in trail running isn’t unique. Across sports, politics, and culture, we’re seeing a shift from centralized gatekeepers to a patchwork of creators and curators. Think NFL stars launching podcasts, or politicians bypassing press conferences for Substack interviews. Trail running is now living its own version of this story.

Ultimately, with all these new outlets the value of Ken’s work with Ultra Minute grows and grows. Ironically, his newsletter represents the perfect metaphor for this moment in trail running media: a community project, built on passion rather than profit, dedicated to amplifying the sport’s many voices.

Maybe that’s the lesson here. As old models collapse, the future of sports media may not be slicker or more profitable. It might just be more human.

If we had a group chat…

• As we have come to expect with running brands, recent quarterly reports from Salomon and Hoka saw strong growth, but how they were received was drastically different. Amer, owners of Salomon and Arcteryx, saw a whopping 23% year-onyear revenue growth, shooting stock up 19%. Hoka had a middling 10% revenue bump, but shares of Decker went down 21%.

  How come? Hoka’s growth is beginning to slow from lightspeed to Lamborghini. Investors have come to expect higher double digit growth from Hoka, but when that’s lower than expected, the CEO is shy on mentioning the effects of tariffs, and US DTC sales actually declined due to “unique factors”, it’s a cause for concern.

• The other thought weighing on investor’s mind is On, who grew 40% in the last quarter - a much spicier number to get behind. Looks like On is beginning to eat into Hoka’s slice of the pie.

• Strava acquired yet another AI training app, this time in cycling, whilst also announcing a new boost of funding. I might be wrong on this, so someone please correct me, but Strava, the main training app of every person who is vaguely active in the western world, has $500M ARR and still needs funding to stay afloat? What are they spending their money on?!

• I find LinkedIn posts can range from enlightening to nauseating - I’ll let you decide where Randi Zuckerberg’s (yes, Mark’s sister) recap on her lesson’s learned from Cocodona sits. Some personal highlights: she mentions doing dress rehearsals with her crew to guide her through an “8,300ft ugly cry”; her ability to start a paragraph with “power hiking” and end with “pace your people”; “Treat Emotions as Dashboards, Not Drivers”🤌. Incredible effort.