High Lonesome 100 Lottery

Reagan Colyer for Trail Runner Magazine:

The resulting 50-50 lottery at High Lonesome effectively functions like two lotteries: one pool for men and one for women, with separate waitlists as well. If a female athlete can’t race, she’s replaced by another female athlete from the waitlist, and the same for male runners.

An interesting solution to the gender inequality in our sport. Run essentially two lotteries, give women equal number of entries. Seems like a no-brainer for big races with a large number of runners wanting too run it but with only limited capacity.

From the race directors:

“We got some experts – because we aren’t – involved with how to do it, and we followed IOC [International Olympic Committee] guidelines for most of the stuff,” says Efta. “It was sort of this big swoop of equity policies, because we worked in changes to our qualifying and pregnancy deferrals for both partners, regardless of gender, for up to two years. It was a big splash of everything.”

This is where our sport, on the upper echelon of competition is heading.