Does UTMB Put Their Fingers on the Scales When Handing Out Indexes for Their Own Races?

Martin Biela over on ‘Uphill Notes‘ runs the numbers, comparing Index results of for popular races between what UTMB hands out and what ITRA delivers:

I matched 2,800 finishes from 199 races against both scores. No home bonus. ITRA is the generous one in most races, UTMB only at the very top.

The popular thesis (among the top runners, and the talking heads who care about this stuff) had been that UTMB is more generous with their own races creating the incentive for folks looking at boosting their Index to race their World Series races. This study Martin conducted seems to refute this point.

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Sort of related and something I hadn’t shared here yet, these are the Index Results for both ITRA and UTMB for this year’s Beast of Big Creek Skyrace:

	ITRA	UTMB
Top Women:
1 – Eve PANNONE	715	719
2 – Natalie BEADLE	704	708
3 – Claudia CORRAL HODAR	699	703
4 – Carmen GRAVES	696	700
5 – Kalie MCCRYSTAL	694	698
Top Men:
1 – Morgan ELLIOTT	871	876
2 – Jose Manuel QUISPE	842	847
3 – Daniel ANTONIOLI	836	841
4 – Jackson COLE	827	831
5 – Beñat ALBISU ETXEBERRIA	792	796

For full results and scores you can visit: UltraSignup, ITRA, UTMB.

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Side note: Registration for Beast 2027 will open Dec 1.