By Mathias Eichler
The adventure podcast about trail running and mountain culture. Subscribe in your favorite podcast player.
The adventure podcast about trail running and mountain culture. Subscribe in your favorite podcast player.
Electric Cable Car is counting down until the end of the year by reliving the action-filled year 2024 in trail running. Join me.
UTMB Index Races are independently organized races that register with UTMB, submit the results after the conclusion of the event and runners receive an index based on their performance. My Beast of Big Creek race is an Index race and runners running the sky race are receiving an Index for the 20km distance:
The UTMB Index is composed of 1000’s of independent races from all across the world. Upon completing a UTMB Index race runners will be awarded their UTMB Index.
In the aftermath of the ‘Whistler kerfuffle’ (and I do hope I can stop talking about it at some point, or maybe I like it, who knows) several race directors have chosen not to renew their inclusion in the index and taken their races out.
Jason Reathaford of the Badger Mountain Challenge in southwest Washington mentioned on social media that he will not include his races in the Index anymore (sorry, I couldn’t find the link to the comment he posted). I suppose running Squamish 50 won’t give you an index anymore. One of the most well-known East Coast races ‘Eastern States‘ in Waterville, PA announced on their Facebook page:
As of this morning, Eastern States 100 and the Eastern States Trail-Endurance Alliance have cut ties with UTMB. We are ending our status as an “Index Race”, and will no longer be associated in any way with the UTMB/Ironman organization. We make this decision with sadness and disappointment, but it is the right thing to do, and we hope that other race organizations, businesses, and individuals will do the same.
I actually expect there to be a significant drop in Index races in North America. It’s just so easy for RDs to not renew their participation.
The race director Jeff Calvert adds a longer explanation on his Substack:
I see this as an intervention, something you do for a loved one who has gone astray. Saying that “UTMB has lost its way” implies that it might find its way back.
I want this be much less “we hate you and everything you touch” and much more “we love you, man, but what you’re doing right now is not acceptable”.
Jeff Calvert ran UTMB himself in 2016 and knows that the event has been part of the fabric of trail and ultra running for twenty years and counting. And he still has some hope:
But that brings me back to my hope, that this incident — and our response to it — might be a wake-up call, both for us as a sport and a community, and for whatever is left of Old UTMB within New UTMB.
Sending a message is good, and high time. And that message needs to be addressed to UTMB, “New UTMB” as he calls it. The organization that’s currently missing the beat of what our community is all about. Sending that message to the runners, who are deciding which races to run and dreams to chase might be the wrong message. Deciding for runners, by taking an opportunity away from folks to get their index points isn’t great.
Gary Robbins on his blog on behalf of is business partner Geoff Langford and the rest of the team at Coast Mountain Trail Running:
We do not feel the need to take this any further and have a PR duel in the town square.
They are clearly done with Whistler as a location, Vail Resorts and as a potential business partner.
And he opens another door he can control and actually wants to operate:
We as a tandem here need to shift our focus back to the work we love, which is preparing another season of the best events possible, for the communities we operate in, and the runners and volunteers who attend them. And of course there’s also that whole looming 10 week deadline to get a new race off the ground now too lol.
As an observer of our industry and on behalf of this tiny media outlet I would love for Gary to make the rounds, show up on every podcast, speak to every media outlet asking him for a snippet of opinion and insight into this kerfuffle, heck I’d love to have him on Singletrack to chat about all this.
As a human being, I understand that sometimes you just gotta wipe your hand, walk away from it all, and focus on what matters.
In the business world that’s how the big guys usually win. By staying always guarded and on message, never divulging too much and just plowing along. Whistler by UTMB is going to happen. The event will have a stench on it for awhile. Nothing really ever gets fully resolved, shit is messy sometimes. But in business that’s how it often goes, the only motions is endless forward progress and sometimes people are being sacrificed in the wake. Gary’s CMTR races will continue to flourish and he’ll be the champion of everyone’s heart.
Life is not a zero sum game and everyone sometimes can win. Win at whatever game everyone set out to play.
Back in January Andy Jones-Wilkins wrote in a blog post on iRunFar:
Whether intended or not, High Lonesome’s policy has the effect of dividing the running community into “UTMB runners” and “non-UTMB runners.” By forcing athletes into making this black and white choice, High Lonesome is perpetuating the divisiveness we see in so much of society today.
…
How do I know that the values of UTMB and Ironman do not “reflect the values of the sport?”
Seems like this Whistler kerfuffle changed AJW’s mind, as it did with many people. On his latest episode of his podcast ‘Crack a Brew with AJW‘ he announces that he’s done with UTMB, praises High Lonesome for seeing Ironman as the “big evil corporation” early on, and seems be in favor now of creating two running camps.
Back on X/Twitter:
I am pleased to share that representatives from the UTMB group have reached out to me to share thoughts on their partnership with Ironman.
Curious what this will lead to. Stay tuned.
From the ‘Advertising tab’ on UltraSignupNews:
We boast a dedicated base of over 5M annual visitors, 650K active emails, and 6,000 races.
And more:
Our 5M annual runners make up 45% of total U.S trail running participation.
This are some fantastic numbers for UltraSignup, and for us to digest and mull over.
For example: the UTMB World Series has 41 events globally. So if we guesstimate an average of 4 races per event and an average of 1,500 runners per event we’re looking at 164 events and 246,000 race entries globally. In North America UTMB owns six events (not counting Western States), 17 race distances with I am guessing an average of 400 runners each? So UTMB is offering 6,800 race entries in North America.
If we consider 6,000 races on UltraSignup (predominately in the US) and guesstimate an average of 200 race entries we’re looking at 1,200,000 race entries available on UltraSignup.
So, UTMB is offering as many RACE ENTRIES in North America as UltraSignup lists RACES. But, tell me again how UTMB is a monopoly?
Brand new trail race, announced just today:
100 mile mountain trail run on much of Mt. Hood’s most diverse and famous terrain! Featuring a super crew-accessible lollipop-style course with 17,700’ of ascent and 17,700’ descent, Hood Hundred offers a truly epic and memorable mountain trail endurance run experience.
Same weekend (Aug 3/+4, 2024) as my Beast of Big Creek race, but I won’t call them a monopoly. This new event is also on the same weekend as Go Beyond Racing’s popular Volcanic 50 and Wonderland Running’s Dark Divide races. This means, the first weekend in August will now have trail races on Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Hood. Daybreak Racing has now 11 races in their portfolio. UTMB has seven in North America (including it’s partnership with Western States).
With all this talk about UTMB being SO expensive, it’s worth pointing out again that US trail races are in general more expensive. But further, I wouldn’t even be surprised if race directors are secretly hoping that UTMB would charge more so it creates a ceiling for them to fit under. And if you come back at me saying that UTMB is so expensive because they require qualification into their lottery by acquiring stones then I would just tell you to sit tight and wait for the local race to sell out year after year and see what lottery/requirements the local RD thinks up to manage the growing interest in their races.
Again, no shade here at Daybreak, this race looks like a fantastic addition to the PNW trail racing scene. And if Daybreak thinks it can add more races to the calendar then it seems to me that our sport and community is ready to handle more events in general. We seem to not be maxed out yet.
Matt Walsh with another great article on his Substack summarizing the last few days in our little world:
Trail running as a sport won’t grow sustainably if we leave the future of the sport to Race Directors alone.
Matt’s responding here to a comment made by David Callaghan of UltraSignUp on the future of our sport. Matt suggests that race directors aren’t in a position, or shouldn’t carry the burden in “saving trail running”. He continues:
Maybe I’ve just been living under a Tory government for over 10 years and know all too well about the effects of leaving it up to the market to right itself, but as this UTMB debate has shown, the playing field is not currently even so we can’t put all the pressure on RDs to be the determinants of the future of trail running.
I can’t argue with that point of view, but looking for an overarching organization to lead us through this might be waiting in vain. Have you heard of FIFA, or the Olympic Committee?
The monopolisation of trail running is occurring because ITRA/WMRA/IAU don’t have any power.
And again, UTMB isn’t even close to monopolization our sport. They might be monopolization our sports’ media, but that is sort of our own fault.
My take, which I’ve made before, is that local race directors do have actually a lot of power, because they aren’t just offering a product/service to purchase (a race entry) but are creating community through their local partnerships and how the manage, attract and engage with volunteers. Yes, I am talking about volunteers again. No race works without them. And UTMB’s current strategy to attract and retain volunteers is currently not even in the same universe compared to the way local race directors treat their volunteers. People might sign up to run a UMTB event to get stones, but if these races don’t have enough/good/the right volunteers, the negative experience can’t be obscured with enough HOKA banners at the finish line. So, race directors might just have the power to control, and keep controlling the narrative. Even if they lose out on the best locations, don’t offer livestreams and stones, and don’t have the media constantly reporting their every move.
One caveat here: What do we think, how starstruck are volunteers? If pro athletes only run UTMB races because their sponsor contracts requires them to dance on the biggest stages, will these elite runners attract volunteers to the big races, despite the lack of recognition and care by the race organization? Will volunteers sign up to sit at an aid station for hours in the hope that Courtney or Jim zoom by? How big is that draw?
Singletrack – Episode 287:
Wes Plate runs long, and I mean really long distances. In many ways I can’t even wrap my head around days of running on end, but I do understand and marvel at the motivation and the story telling through creative route creation. His latest project of running 200 miles around the Puget Sound in Western Washington is both equally mind-blowing and inspiring.
Wes also shares some news on his race directing debut at the Copper Kings 100 in Montana, slated of the summer of 2024.
Back in January of this year, in response to High Lonesome 100’s ‘anti UTMB policy’ I wrote:
But clearly, it would do UTMB a ton of good if they wouldn’t just drip out faceless press releases week after week announcing their endless expansion, but instead put some faces to their ever-growing organization and make their moves a bit more transparent, and… well, friendly and personal to us as runners.
We’re now almost a year later and UTMB is slowly expanding its empire, albeit slower than I anticipated (there’s still no announcement of an American Major). But this past week has clearly given the ‘naysayers’ and ‘slipper slope predictors’ a ton of cannon fodder. The Whistler by UTMB race announcement couldn’t have gone any worse. Overnight the trail world seems to have split into two fractions, the UTMB and anti-UTMB crowd. How many people who previously wanted to race UTMB and since have abandoned their plans waits to be seen but overall this is not a great trend. We don’t need to build walls and trenches. And before you yell at me, telling I’m taking the side of “the aggressor” here, breathe for a second.
UTMB is going to be part of our sport. The race in Chamonix won’t go away. How we qualify might change over time and even Ironman might change their expansion plans in the coming years, but for now, UTMB is part of our trail landscape and our trail running media landscape. Currently their expansion might be successful on a spreadsheet (I would assume it’s too early to tell, even for them) but where they are clearly failing is in positioning themselves on the North American market as a trusted player and welcome neighbor in our community. Being “an elephant in a china shop” isn’t working and their team needs to make adjustments.
I said it before and I’m bringing it back up because it feels more pertinent than before: UTMB needs proper representation here in North America. I highly suggest that Ironman doesn’t try to run its operation over here via fiat. Hire a well-know spokesperson, someone the community knows and trust. Let that person play community liaison and explainer of their moves. Someone who stands up and says: This is what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Rather than present everything via email press release (that’s how I found out about the Whistler race), have someone go on a media offense and present their plans. These new events are a big enough deal that it requires it. It can’t be that hard to find a “director of race directors”. Someone who represents all their local races on the ground. Someone who can go on record when a new race is announced. And someone who truly understands the North American trail running community. UTMB’s moves are under way too much scrutiny to let the local race director take that on. They are busy trying to build a successful event. I actually feel bad for the new Whistler RD trying to manage this situation that has evolved up there in BC. And in extend, I feel bad for every RD that’s currently hired to organize an UTMB event. They have a lot of explaining to do at their next group run.
But the larger community is watching, and it would behoof the Ironman organization to acknowledge this and be better prepared.
Team RunRun’s coach Laurie Porter shares some super helpful inside on how to prep for and taper for a 10K, or more specifically Rock Candy Running’s Saturnalia:
Whether you are an experienced runner or a newbie, tapering sets you up for success on race day. It doesn’t matter if your goal is to simply finish the race, or if you are aiming to set a personal record, tapering well is going to help you be your best on race day.
You have until Halloween night to sign up for Saturnalia and save some dough with our early bird pricing. See you on December 16th at Squaxin Park in Olympia, Washington.
Just for folks playing along in the online shitstorm creation game a quick reminder: UTMB is not a monopoly, not even close.
The definition for a monopoly:
Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service.
UTMB is not controlling every single race out there, you are not forced to run their races. Their races aren’t the only option for you to enjoy trail running. They currently own 6 races in the North America and partner with a seventh (Western States).
Rock Candy Running, my race company, operates three. Rainshadow Running operated eight, Aravaipa has over fifty! on their annual calendar.
There’s plenty to complain, criticize and question about UTMB/Ironman’s partnership and operation, but spreading misinformation doesn’t help anyone’s case.
If “trail running is supposed to save the world”, we, claiming to be their voices and stewards, gotta do better.
Brian Metzler for Trailrunner has some more backstory on how this UTMB-Gary-Vail-Whistler kerfuffle went down, including some valuable first person responses by spokespeople for the various entities:
UTMB’s take:
Ironman-UTMB officials who developed the new event said Friday they were surprised at Robbins’s reaction because he and his event partner Geoff Langford had voluntarily chosen to cancel its proposed September 2023 event during the application process back in February, saying on February 10 that CMTR would not pursue any further events in Whistler and, after six successful editions, there was “no path forward for us to produce races of this magnitude.”
Keats McGonigal, Ironman’s North American vice president of operations goes further:
“It was our understanding, based on Gary’s public comments, that he was exiting the Whistler market and had no intention of ever going back,” McGonigal said. “That was our understanding based on what he had put out publicly back in February. So we were taken a little bit aback because it’s like, ‘Hey, you guys said that you were out of there and you weren’t going back. So if you’re going to leave a market, then you’re going to leave a market.”
Whistler Blackcomb on the challenges to obtain a permit which lead to CMT walking away from WAM:
“What this comes down to is we simply were not satisfied or comfortable with how Whistler Alpine Meadows planned to address safety issues from the race the year prior,” Whistler Blackcomb’s release said. “We will not compromise on safety as it is our number one priority, and we should note that our safety protocols and policies have not changed significantly year over year. We were not willing to move forward with the 2023 race without an adequate safety and medical plan, and WAM was unwilling to work with us on this.”
This is sort of the nugget of it all:
Although CMTR announced it had permanently walked away from the event in its February 10 post on Instagram, Robbins seemed to contradict that in his blog. He wrote that, as recently as last summer, he and Langford were optimistic they would renew a dialogue with the resort for holding the WAM events in 2024 after their previous resort contact had been replaced. He even suggested that, for the past five weeks, the CMTR team had been “holding our collective breath about a hopeful surprise announcement to the community that we’d be returning to Whistler next year!”
IF! Every person so far has spoken the truth, then this sort of comes down to a cold blooded business decision: “Hey, there’s a race course that has opened up, we’ll just grab it.” Is this fair? Is this respectful? Is it right to feel like you own a region for yourself? Could this have been handled differently and better?
Paul Huddle, Ironman’s senior director for global trail running operations concludes:
We’re all stewards of this amazing sport, and we need to band together more than go apart. But again, I get it. Ironman, UTMB, we’re the big bad wolf … we’re the corporate whatever. I understand that and I empathize with that. But I do think there’s an opportunity here for both.
You know, you don’t have to be the ‘big bad wolf’. If you represent a corporate entity you don’t have to make it so easy for everyone to hate you. You don’t have to own the title ‘big bad wolf’ by acting like one. These past 24 hours felt like the collective trail running world has announced that there shouldn’t be room for a ‘big bad wolf’. Can there be room for a global corporate entity that is good, respectful, smart and kind in our sport?
UTMB/Ironman, you get to choose what role you want to play and what names we call you as a result.
Dominic Grossman gives us the most obvious solution out of this Whistler/Ironman/UTMB/Vail mess in form of nothing else than a GoFundMe, because of course:
Hi, this is Dominic and Andy, good friends of race director Gary Robbins. To put it mildly, Gary got screwed by Big Running. His ultra, WAM that he has put on for 5 years in Whistler mysteriously stopped getting permits from Vail Resorts. Then on October 26th, UTMB announced that they were now putting on an ultra at Whistler.
That’s when it became clear to us: UTMB is ruining trail running. And the only feasible solution is for Gary Robbins to buy their race for 50 million dollars and save the sport from moral bankruptcy.
The Big Running vs. Big Beard showdown we’ve all been waiting for.
Read the whole thing, it’s worth every word. The story is just as bad as one would have thought. Vail fucked up badly but this is the part that’s most crucial new piece in the puzzle:
In 2021 during the pandemic we were contacted via the IM-UTMB group about potentially acquiring our Squamish50 races. I said we were not interested and we moved on. One year later, in 2022 they reached out a second time. By this point I knew two race directors who I respected that’d decided to sell to them. I also heard through a verified source that two more highly respected race directors in the US were also in conversations with them about a potential acquisition. Geoff & I have been doing this now for 11 years now, and the first 5 were a major struggle to make ends meet. Given the unique opportunity on the table we decided, after an incredible amount of dialogue between us and our families, that we might as well hear them out. We signed an NDA and had a single zoom meeting with them. I was completely torn about this and cannot say with any certainty what we would have done had we been tabled an offer. Above all else we would never compromise what we’d built by allowing a major entity to not honour our values. On the single zoom meeting we had with this group I came forth by saying there were “many non-negotiables” on my end, meaning our community support programs, our volunteer appreciation programs, etc. The response was simply that that’d be a conversation for another time. The last we’d heard from them was in late June saying they were putting a pause on this for the short term.
Good luck with that strategy UTMB/Ironman. You will fail, or as a well-known and very well-positioned race director said to me at the US Trail Running Conference this past weekend: “I’ll give them five years and this UTMB World Series will fail.”
Here it is. The inevitable has come true. UTMB/Ironman announced a new event in North America and for the first time it’s not just a rebranded/acquired/previously existing event, but a brand new one. Except it’s not.
For the past 5 years Gary Robbins’ Coast Mountain Trail Running held the Whistler Alpine Meadows on the trails of Whistler Blackcomb resort. But the resort, under new ownership of conglomerate Vail Resorts didn’t renew the permit and the event was permanently cancelled just this past February.
The race is in a perfect location. I previously said, when Gary Robbins announced Whistler Alpine Meadows that this location has the makeup to become THE UTMB location in North America. A lot has changed since, but the mountains still exist and the location is still incredible. It’s close to a major city, close to an international airport. The trails aren’t at insane altitude (my personal favorite!) and most of the trails are in a resort, so permitting should be straightforward. So one thinks.
Fast forward a few years and Coast Mountain has had a few challenging COVID years (which RD hasn’t) and then the announcement arrives last February that WAM is dropped due to Gary and team not being able to come to terms with Vail Resorts.
So a beloved, albeit new-ish and not without complications (grizzlies, snow…) race is shut down. Not unheard of, but still somewhat surprising because it certainly felt that Coast Mountain had wanted to continue to operate it. CMT is clearly a highly regarded, professional organization that shouldn’t have any problems getting permits for an event like this. CMT didn’t walk away from it due to ‘difficulties’ or ‘lack of runners’, they couldn’t get a permit from resort owner Vail. No real reason given beyond that, but rumors have been floating through the grapevine that Vail was particularly complicated in trying to make this event happen. It almost felt like they didn’t want WAM. Which is surprising because Whistler has had a history of summer trail events beyond mountain biking and even after Vail took over several events continued to operate.
In any case we now see what this expansion is going to look like. Here in North America UTMB/Ironman still doesn’t seem to be able to find good locations for races unless someone did the legwork for them. So they end up buying an existing race or in this case, taking the work someone else did and stepping in and in many ways all over.
Should this be an unsettling reminder for race directors? Is this the turning point on how that Ironman/UTMB partnership is perceived in the community? Is this fair game? Squamish was oversold over year anyways and Gary walked away from Whistler. Is it just a blip in the news cycle and we all just move on and sign up to race anyways because the draw to race in Chamonix is just too great?
One thing is clear, the initial reaction online about this event is all negative. There’s a lot of behind the scenes moaning that this is, on paper, the perfect event – and this in the end might be UTMB’s financial saving grace, but the stench stays. And while this might not affect registrations this could really bite UTMB in the ass when it comes to getting folks to volunteer. I am not envying race director Christine Cogger, who previously managed the Ironman Canada in Whistler, to try to build an event under these circumstances.
The first brand new* UTMB event in North America was announced today in one of the most perfect locations for an international trail race. The dates are set for September 28-29 and the distances are 25K, 55K, 100K.
The event is added to the ECC UTMB Events Calendar.
* While this is technically the first race in North America that UTMB didn’t acquire but start from the ground up, the event runs on many of the same trails as Gary Robbins’ Whistler Alpine Meadow race. It’s even held during the same time of year. Coast Mountain cancelled their WAM race just this past February citing irresolvable differences with resort owner Vail.
Team RunRun Coach Keith Laverty:
I’m racing the Saturnalia 10k in Olympia, WA this December, and I think you should join me, or at least join me in racing some sub-ultra distance trail races! Why should you join me? The quick answer: Racing a 10k trail race is for anyone and everyone (especially the Saturnalia race!) Regardless of experience level or ability, the 10k distance can serve as a great goal for anyone interested in running on trails. And better yet: The Saturnalia 10k event has no cut-offs and offers a supportive community of runners that celebrates each and every runner who shows up to the start line.
Join me and Keith this December and come race the fun, wintery Saturnalia.
Every year the Euro fashion brands release “cute knit sweaters” with even cuter winter ski scenes on them, often adding a name of one the popular resorts in the Alps. Benetton’s Cortina sweater is extra on point this year showing skiers on a ski lift with green trees below with no real snow on them. Is this a design accident or a subtle way of highlighting the realities of climate change and its effect on European ski resorts?
The 2024 World Championships for the Backyard Ultra is currently happening in Laz’s backyard, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee. As I type this the world record is being broken in this insane and quirky race format. The folks left running are from another planet and I am not even going to post how much they’ve achieved as they are still out there grinding the miles.
What I want to point out is that a livestream is now increasingly is part of the expectation for these well-known events and are all done in the same way. I’m not even going to criticize the quality and realities of YouTube livestream limitations. What I don’t get is that embedding a livestream on your official race website is super easy but hardly anyone does this. Livestreams are mainly there to help lift the visibility of the event and therefore its sponsors. Why not build a dedicated homepage where the livestream during the event lives and pop the latest live feed in there every time YouTube forces you to restart. Ain’t that hard, creates huge brand value for yourself and your sponsors. And fans can easily share your race website rather than “search on Youtube and hope you find the current feed’.
Or is nowadays everyone using the Youtube app, rather than the browser for this and therefore websites are moot? Maybe in the evening, on your iPad or on your TV, but during the day, while working one has a browser window open to watch, right? Am I alone on this?
(This links directly to the PDF summarizing the policy in detail.)
In the ongoing effort of UTMB to increase and encourage the participation of adaptive athletes in trail running, UTMB has implemented a new adaptive athlete policy across all UTMB World Series events.
The policy reads actually pretty straightforward:
If you qualify as an adaptive athlete based on various criteria’s that seems industry standards then you can apply to run in the Adaptive Athlete Open Division and are allowed a guide with you for the duration of the race.
Just this last week the US Trail Running Conference an adaptive athletes shared a rather disappointing experience they had running one of the UTMB races at one of the sessions. I’m not sure if this policy is sufficient, but it’s a start, an acknowledging that the community exists and has desires and abilities to run even the hardest ultras. Great to see UTMB respond and build a pathway for adaptive athletes to compete.
Franco Fogliato, Salomon CEO in a press release:
For decades, we have been dedicated to finding the limits of athletic performance in Alpine and Nordic ski racing, and today we have found a moment to connect our Salomon brand purpose to the Olympic movement. I speak for every Salomon associate globally in saying that we could not be prouder today to announce that we are a Premium Olympic and Paralympic Partner of Milano Cortina 2026!
Of course Salomon has always been a much bigger force in winter sports than trail running, but nonetheless this is a big step for Salomon and an exciting one for “one of our outdoor brands”. And this too might explain a bit why Salomon has seemed to slow down in their marketing toward the outdoor market, their ambitions were set higher, much higher. In sports marketing sponsoring the Olympics is the pinnacle of achievement… and dollars spent.
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