By Mathias Eichler
It is time. In October you can stream TRFF'26 - from the comfort of our couch, with friends, and popcorn. Ten films, hours of inspiration.
Another cryptic and rushed announcement by UTMB, shared only on Instagram:
The direct qualification rules for the UTMB World Series Finals evolve (UTMB, CCC and OCC) to allow top runners in every category to qualify closer to home, while protecting lottery access for the entire community.
In the comments on the post UTMB shared some more details:
To be clear on the why: this change allows top runners to qualify closer to home while capping direct slots at Majors (from 210 down to 60) to avoid overcrowding the Finals and preserve lottery chances for the community.
We aren’t removing age group qualifications – a new system dedicated to age categories across the whole circuit will be announced shortly. In the meantime, Majors still double your Running Stones for the lottery.
In the Trail Talk WhatsApp group UTMB’s Fabrice Perrin shares some insight on the vague timing of the announcement:
Context on the timing: Val d’Aran registrations were about to open, and we didn’t want anyone signing up thinking they could still qualify for the Finals through their age group… if that’s no longer the case.
So we chose to say it now, even though the replacement pathway is still being finalised… Not ideal, I know, but better than letting people find out afterwards.
It’s not about shutting age-groupers out, quite the opposite. More soon.
This seems to be the first major adjustment of the UTMB qualification process since its inception. How major, will yet to be seen. But what is clear is that with the continue growth of the World Series and the continued demand by athletes to race one of the Finals UTMB has a lot of wiggle room to tighten the screws in various places.
In any case, in two weeks I’ll be at Kodiak getting myself my 2 (Major!) stones for the year. – And no, I’m not gunning for an age group place anytime soon.
Adding a few random weekend thoughts and some wild predictions about last week’s announcement that Run Rabbit Run is going to increase their prize money in 2027 and 2028 for the men and women’s race winner to $100,000 each, courtesy of non-endemic sponsor and longtime race supporter Insight Global.
As it currently stands, with just the first place winners receiving the really big payout, my guess is that not many elites will take the bait. Maybe they reach out to the RD and hope to snag an elite bib, put themselves on the starting list to “play the game”, but if this large sum doesn’t trickle down to the top ten in some ways – via other brands jump on board to fill out the table – I would wager very few top elites will forgo UTMB to focus on WINNING RRR. Of course, this hypothesis dramatically changes if the top ten receive similar bumps in prize money.
I would wager UTMB/Hoka will not announce any drastic increase in prize money for 2027 – mid deal cycle. This cushion of time will give both organizations a chance to see how athletes and elites will respond to this announcement by RRR/Insight Global. Further, they are busy with the mayor of Chamonix anyways and have other things to worry about, including the UCI Championships – word is that UTMB might have to move their dates for the Finals in 2027. And then there’s the WMTRC in Cape Town in 2027 as well, and while the date for this event isn’t until early October this does play into the consideration for athletes as their are planning their 2027 calendar of races.
When races like Gorge Waterfalls and Broken Arrow announced their prize purses the deal also added several high profile ACG athletes to the race lineup, and consequentially to the podiums. To a point that at Gorge 42% of the total purse was won by Nike athlete/employees.
This suggest that when shoe brands or – endemic sponsors if you will – are sponsoring a race, they include contractual incentives for their athletes to show up at said event. I’m not suggesting that there’s any expectation to “win that money back” that would be preposterous – but also quite frankly hilarious. But it does highlight that brands who are “all in” on an event have a strong incentive to have their athletes show up and represent the brand throughout the weekend. Merrell, as title sponsor of the Skyrunner World Series, brought their whole US trail team to Beast of Big Creek this summer. A non-endemic sponsor doesn’t have the same ability to activate any athletes for an event. This could be a crucial and missing piece for RRR/Insight Global here.
Common conversation often used as an explainer excuse, on why Hardrock100 and Western States are NOT paying out prize money is that both events are managed and owned by nonprofit organizations. So far a lot (most) of the media’s attention has been around a possible UTMB response here (and given the close proximity of both events on the calendar, this makes some sense) but shouldn’t this announcement also put some pressure on Hardrock and WSER? And maybe a renewed call, or even the beginnings of a call for Hardrock and WSER to step up?
I am told that RRR race director Fred Abramowitz passionately believes RRR can be one of THE big races on our trail calendar (UTMB, Hardrock, Western States, Diagonale des Fous). And one can assume that the focus on prize money (which RRR has offered since its inception) is the mechanism for RRR to get there. RRR competes on various fronts, but mostly on the calendar due to its date being in close proximity to UTMB. As an America race, run by a nonprofit – like Hardrock and WSER – and with the unique distinction of having one of the largest prize purse in trail running, what would happen if RRR would move its date to early Summer? Of course this is entirely hypothetical as I have no idea if this could happen in Colorado’s Steamboat Springs, due to weather, snow melt in the Rockies and a variety of other factors. But how different would the conversation be if RRR competed on the calendar with similar races, in the same country, the ones offering NO prize money? Would that mean immediate game over? All of a sudden we’d be talking about a possibly very lucrative RRR+UTMB double.
Why don’t I start this one off with an Odyssey reference, after all this movie had been the talk of the town throughout the summer , but I digress. I’m not here to talk about movies, but if I would, I would talk about the Trail Running Film Festival streaming the 2027 tour reel all October long online. Tickets will be available starting Oct. 1. Oh, I did digress, I wasn’t going to talk about movies, and neither was I talking about the last two year’s men’s winners of the UTMB Finals, Tom Evans and Ben Dhiaman, both ASICS athletes.
njuko is a online events registration platform. The company is based out of France, but since 2022 owned by ASICS – the Japanese shoe and sportswear company. And further, ASICS owns several other registration platforms, among them Race Roster and GetMeRegistered. Why does ASICS own event registration platforms? And what’s the value her for a shoe company? The data, I would presume. Athlete information, runner data, event insights – all available, globally through registration platforms.
Now, back to njuko. As you might have guessed, they are a white-label event registration platform that is powering every (probably) UTMB World Series race registration globally. Yes, ASICS the shoe company and competitor to HOKA, title sponsor of the UTMB World Series is behind the company that’s controlling every transaction for every race registration for the UTMB World Series. That’s a lot of data.
Make what you will with this information but this is fascinating and will deserve a lot more digging and ruminating.
PS: Thanks to a friendly tipster for pointing me into this direction.
New dates for Ultra Trail Whistler by UTMB are set for 2027. And in the coming year they will be in June. The end of June to be precise, 25-27 June, 2027. The same weekend as Western States, Lavaredo Ultra Trail and Mont-Blanc Marathon. Yes, the busiest weekend in trail.
I will give the UTMB/Ironman team that the Whistler resort is very busy in the summer, and mountain biking still reigns supreme for Vail Resorts – and that alone might be the reason for this endless reshuffling of dates. But after several years of trying it seems is event just can’t find a footing on the calendar. (Side note: Coast Mountain Trail Running (which vowed to never go back to Whistler) has their Whistler Half Marathon in early June as well.)
Not sure what to make of all this, but as I reiterated several times before, Whistler as a resort – it’s large, it’s beautiful, it’s not too high up; and Whistler as a location – it’s close to a major city and airport and has excellent infrastructure as previous OIympic Games host, has all the make up to be THE North American location for a massive trail running event akin to Cortina, Chamonix, or Garmisch-Partenkirchen. But whatever the reasons behind the scenes are – we’re now several years into this idea – it seems like this is just not going to happen. What a huge wasted opportunity.
The other Canadian UTMB World Series event: Boréalys Mont-Tremblant by UTMB was held in mid-August this year (no 2027 date announced yet). This is a week before the UTMB Finals week and totally overshadowed by it. There’s no love by UTMB for Canada, so it seems.
This is an interesting snippet out of Egon Theiner’s interview on the German language ‘Trail Running World‘ blog with Marino Giacometti, founder of the International Skyrunning Federation. Giacometti says:
Trail running, as you say, is assigned to World Athletics. Our connection to the UIAA exists because skyrunning is a mountain sport, not athletics.
I’ve been touching on this idea that “Skyrunning goes up and down the mountain. Trail running goes around it” in my interview with Etienne on Singletrack.
Josh Rosenthal on Borderlands:
Directed by Max Lowe and produced by Evan Hayes, the film follows photographer Aisha McAdams as she documents HOKA athletes Jim Walmsley and Vincent Bouillard competing at the Western States Endurance Run and Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB).
Learning to Fly will be available globally on Prime Video following a limited theatrical run and a series of private screenings, including events hosted for REI and Scheels.
Another fascinating step for REI to embrace the ‘racing side’ of trail running.
In an essay reflecting on the recent death of Ida Amelie Robsahm and Kalie McCrystal Ian quotes the great mountaineer Reinhold Messner:
“If death was not a possibility, coming out (of the mountains) would be nothing. It would be kindergarten, but not an adventure and not an art.”
He continues with his own words in an essay which is is an absolute must read from top to bottom:
For those of us drawn to mountains, the attraction is not recklessness. It is something much deeper. Mountains provide perspective in a world increasingly dominated by distraction. They challenge us physically and mentally. They expose weaknesses and reveal strengths. They offer moments of fear, humility, joy, wonder and achievement.
In many ways, mountain running allows us to experience the full spectrum of what it means to be alive.
The lows are real.
The highs are extraordinary.
I’m glad we have voices like Ian’s in our sport, we’re better off for it.
Jujuy Fuerza Sagrada by UTMB was just announced at the beginning of this month. Registration opened yesterday and within a day the team announced it sold out all distances.
ALL DISTANCES ARE SOLD OUT.
In record time, thousands of runners said yes to an adventure that hasn’t even begun yet, but is already making history.
Momentum.
Commissioned by Apple:
Jimmy Chin takes iPhone 18 Pro to new heights to depict the spiritual connection between climber and pure verticality.
See the work as part of our global photography exhibition “What Holds Us,” exploring the search for human connection within a heavily distracted contemporary world. Through moments of touch, gaze, care, ritual, solitude, and shared experience, the artists explore presence and the ways we relate, belong, and find meaning. In New York City September 18-20.
Conrad Anker is the object, oh and mountains, of course.
I’m not supposed to have to share two of these posts within one summer. Fabrice Perrin with the sad news on Instagram:
Ida Amelie Robsahm, 1996–2026.
Fifth at OCC three weeks ago. Fourth at last year’s World Championships. A maths and chemistry teacher who took up running seriously at 25 and, four years later, was racing among the best in the world.
She fell on Saturday on Romsdalseggen, at home, in the mountains.
Her sponsor ASICS:
We are deeply shocked and saddened by the tragic passing of Ida Amelie Robsahm.
Ida was a remarkable athlete and teammate. Her warmth and kindhearted nature touched many of us at ASICS and the running community.
Too young, too soon, just too much. Life is short, hug your loved ones.
This is something that’s been that’s been noted several times but I don’t think I have made a point of mentioned it here. The UCI Cycling World Championship will be in the Chamonix Valley (Haute-Savoie Mont-Blanc) this coming year:
From 24 August to 5 September 2027, Haute-Savoie Mont-Blanc will host the 2027 UCI Cycling World Championships – the largest cycling event ever staged.
Over 13 days, more than 15,000 athletes from around the world will compete for 288 UCI World titles across 20 UCI World Championships held at 17 competition venues, showcasing a remarkable range of disciplines including Road, Para-cycling, Mountain Bike, BMX, Track, Gravel, Indoor Cycling and many more.
This event was awarded to the host region back in 2022. So clearly many years ago when UTMB was big, but not THAT big yet. How will this affect UTMB? Not sure, but maybe the reason the expo is shrinking for next year is a result of this, and it’s just a one time thing?
Also, if I would wager a guess I would think next year might be the year to skip Chamonix. Having both events in the area during the same timeframe sounds like absolute mayhem.
Lastly: UTMB has not made the dates for their Finals in 2027 official on their website.
Okay, this is really the last ‘lastly’: According to the UCI website there won’t be any event directly in Chamonix, just in the nearby villages and larger region. So maybe these two events are able to co-exist during the same week without any bigger problems.
Episode 355 with Lil Abelha & Jason Santos:
Lil and Jason love to run trails and know how to develop great technology products. This combo brought them together to build Kaduka – your new trail running companion. An app (website for now) that invites you to discover new trails (and trail races) near you and explore a community that knows the area around you.
This is the second announcement of a running shoe brand making their foray into the soccer space this week. ON is following their usual playbook here by partnering with a select few top tier athletes/celebrities:
On
SoccerFootball is here to bring you closer to the game than ever before.Uniting revolutionary LightSpray™ technology with real-world experience from Kylian Mbappé, Thierry Henry and Sydney Schertenleib, we’re co-creating the future of soccer.
Getting that LightSpray technology onto soccer cleats will be fun to see.
PS: Yes, it’s called Football in Europe. I erroneously quoted the American website here and have since fixed it. Thank you Federico for pointing this out.
Hot off the presses via iRunFar:
At the pre-race briefing on Thursday, September 17, co-race director Fred Abramowitz announced that the 2027 and 2028 women’s and men’s champions will be awarded $100,000 for their wins.
Race sponsor Insight Global is putting up the prize money, and the race organization says more information is coming soon. This will make winning the 2027 and 2028 Run Rabbit Run 100 one of the richest wins in trail and ultra. Wow!
iRunFar’s coverage of the Run Rabbit Run 100 is brought to you by REl and The North Face. Thank you!
Shared the whole post verbatim to point out a few things:
The bonus point that I’m making here is that it’s interesting to see that REI is sponsoring iRunFar’s race coverage. This might be REI’s first foray into the trail running marketing space. And I’m not talking about them selling shoes, but them actually getting engaged with the “racing aspect” of trail running. This is new.
Just released this month, Vert.Run offers a snapshot of who trail runners are and what makes them tick. (You can download the full report in PDF form from the link above.) How their data is gathered:
This report draws on data from 97,000 selected accounts in the Vert.run community, to have a more accurate data set. To keep the picture as accurate and current as possible, training volume, training days, and weekly-rhythm figures (hardest and longest sessions) reflect our most recent cohort: the latest 15,000 accounts created. The footwear, fueling, and race-goal sections draw on what we learn as athletes plan their gear, nutrition, and races with Vert.
Vert’s community is a sub-segment of the broader trail running world, specifically, runners who actively seek out coaching and structure for their training. It isn’t everyone who runs trails. But it’s a real and growing slice of the sport, and we believe it offers one of the clearest windows available into how today’s trail runner actually trains.
Yes, this report skews toward the more engaged and focused runner – the one seeking out a coach to achieve a goal and not just the casual runner.
It also shows the obvious global appeal of our sport. A large number of runners are coming from regions that don’t yet have the same representation or focus in our media, or on the podiums.
One of the biggest opportunities that I see in this report is the data around slower runners, those battling cutoffs (hey that’s me!).
Most ITRA and UTMB index scores entered cluster in the same solid mid-pack band, runners who already know roughly what they’re capable of. But a meaningful minority sit well below that line, under a 300 index score, exactly the runners for whom knowing if they’ll make the cutoff is a real, practical concern.
(Highlighted by me.)
These slow runners actually pay for their bibs, as supposed to many elites who expect their entry to be comped. Managing high demand for a race by tightening the cutoffs isn’t just a form of discrimination it also creates an opportunity for other race organizations to compete on inclusivity.
Not a surprise to hear this after all this mayor kerfuffle over the past few weeks. Word is that the expo, or Ultra-Trail® Village, which had grown in size over the past few years, will be reduced over 60% for 2027.
This will change a lot. And while it’s the right and first of possibly several steps to mitigate the increased pressure on the Chamonix Valley it will also dramatically increase the challenges for brands to have a presence during UTMB week. Will this lead to more ambushing events? Or an alternate expo in a nearby town – the indie expo if you will, since the reduced official village will clearly increase their fees and thus force smaller indie brands to forgo their booth altogether? Maybe brands will abandon the week altogether as a platform to showcase their products. And I purposely wrote “showcase” as sales at the expo will be disallowed going forward as well. With all these changes at least they are letting the brands and vendors know early enough so that alternate plans can be made. Maybe we will see even more vending machines at nearby refugios next year?
All of the UTMB race recap blog posts by the elite runners are great reads, and almost mandatory for us trail super fans. And not because you learn something new about race, but about the person behind the athlete. Joaquin Lopez’s blog is one of my favorite’s. And at Latinos Runs he shares his UTMB experience. My favorite part isn’t from the race, but the award ceremony after:
The next day, 30 minutes before going up on the podium, I walked into the tent by the stage, first of all the award winners to arrive. Soon enough people started showing up, Gautier, Baptiste, Ben, Blandine, Rachel, Lucy, and little by little the tent filled up. Gautier and I started talking and suddenly Hannes walked in with a six pack of German beers. He said hi, and with a lighter started popping the caps off the beers like a pro who knows what he’s doing. There we were, Ben, Hannes, Gautier, Baptiste and me, sharing stories with a beer in hand. For the first time in that tent, (although this was my third time there) I felt like one of the group, I wasn’t the shy Latino sitting quietly in the corner of the tent staring at the floor without talking to anyone. I was one more of them, laughing, asking questions, engaging.
I love this so much. Hannes, bringing a pack of beer to share with his fellow competitors. Yes, it’s the most German thing you can think of and that might make you smirk. But among all the stereotypes one has of “typical” Germans this gesture highlights exactly one of the core tenants of German life. It’s not about the beer, or the innate ability to open the bottles by any means imaginable, it’s the fact that his gesture of hospitality is what brings people together. It’s mid-September right now. Oktoberfest kicked off in my favorite city in the world München. And while folks talk about the Trachten or costumes, the absurd amounts of beer consumed and the absurd prices folks pay for them, most of all Oktoberfest is about the very notion of bringing people together, around a table, the “ice breaker” (if you will) being a Brezn, and a shared Prost over a beer. This is what brings people together. Be it 6 million gathering annually at the Theresianwiese in the heart of München or a handful elite athletes in a tent in Chamonix waiting for their finisher awards. Life can be that simple. And that is beautiful.
Kyle Frost from Here & There takes the data he’s been collecting for:
Visitation, reservations and economic data for public lands, normalized across agencies and searchable by park or state.
And puts it all on its own website: publiclandsdata.com. He writes:
Federal agencies publish an enormous amount of recreation data, but much of it is “hidden” in random CSV files and distributed across various agency websites. I built this site as a one-stop resource to see recreation data in one place and organized the data into clearer takeaways and visualizations where possible.
This is super cool stuff. And probably the reason why this hasn’t been done prior is that many organizations you are advocating for public lands in various ways all live in their various silos and care only about their silos. Which isn’t a bad thing in it of itself, but shows one of the challenges of our public lands in this vast country being managed federally.
Great post by Caleb Olson who’s joining the choruses of guys post UTMB who are shooting their shot. He concludes with the following paragraph:
If you’re reading this and you see your name on this list, let me know if you want to race and let’s figure something out. There’s no rule that says we can only have super deep competitive races at WSER and UTMB, it would just take a little coordination and planning for a bunch of us to show up for MIUT or TGC or Andorra or something. My schedule is pretty open right now. If the much more likely thing happens where the people on this list don’t read this, maybe I’ll message some of them and see if I can find out where I can test myself against them next.
Where have we heard this before?
Jim Walmsley, Zach Miller, Kilian Jornet all announced, shortly have having had varying degrees of success at the UTMB Finals in Chamonix, that they’d like to find a different race for the top elites to gather and race each other. “Will it succeed this time?” Is probably the wrong question. But what I do wonder is what it would actually take to make this happen? If several of the top athletes actually would pull it off to coordinate their calendars and travel to a ‘different race’ all in the same year, and not get sidelined by injury, would the media follow, immediately, like for the first year, not just in consequential years, after they had success at whichever event they choose to gather? I’m not suggesting that this is a pointless endeavor, I am just wondering what it would actually take for this to be successful. It could possibly, open up the annual trail racing calendar and create a shift and possibly a different focus and storyline around a new event.
Sign up and never miss a story.
Electric Cable Car is a owned by Einmaleins and part of trail. run. film. Productions. ©2026. All Rights Reserved.
