ITRA National League

This has been announced a few weeks ago:

The ITRA National League is a new and exciting initiative, open to ALL trail running enthusiasts, aimed at growing the sport at a national level.

So, this is a bit like Strava leaderboards on steroids:

• Run and finish 3 National League races in the same country in the ongoing year
• Discover and follow your ranking throughout the year on the NATIONAL LEAGUE RANKING page.

I searched the race calendar for 2024 and there are 5! five events listed. Germany has 13 on the calendar.

ITRA charges race directors €100/year to have the races included in their database, which isn’t much, but clearly the incentive doesn’t seem to be there for US RD’s to want to participate.

ITRA’s North American representation is all but 4 people, and only two are from the US. Compare that with 43 people from various European countries.

This “global race series thing” just doesn’t seem to excite either RDs or runners.