Jamil Coury is the Most Powerful Person in Trail Running

In light of yesterday’s news that Jamil bought Ultrarunning Magazine I wanted to collect and list what else Jamil owns (and by Jamil I mean Aravaipa which is a family business and registered LLC in Arizona operated by Nicholas Coury, Jamil Coury, Peter Coury, Nathan Coury, Melia Coury, Pati Coury):

Aravaipa Running, the racing events company operates 58 events (as currently listed on their website) in the three states of Arizona, Colorado, New Hampshire.

These include:

• Cocodona – the most important “max ultra” (over 100miles) event in North America.
• Black Canyon Ultras and Javelina Jundred, which are two of North America’s largest ultras and also make up for 2/3s of the US’s Western States Golden Ticket races, and 1/3 of global Golden Ticket races.
• Dozens of larger and smaller events including Jigger Johnson Ultras, Mogollon Monster 100 and the popular Desert Solstice Track Invitational and the Across The Years events.
• Aravaipa also owns The Silverton Alpine Maration and the Kendall Mountain Run in Silverton which happens the week before Hardrock each year.

With Mountain Outpost Jamil offers live broadcasting of 14 live events (that 17 races) for 2024. That includes two of the most important trail races in thew world: Western States and Hardrock (both nonprofit organizations). There’s really no other American entity that owns as many Starlinks, or has the capacity to offer live-streaming for trail races beyond a fixed finish line cam. (UTMB is streaming, or trying to stream 1 event (Canyons) in the US and eight globally in 2024.)

Yesterday ‘Steep Life Media’ (a new business entity registered with the Arizona Secretary of State on 5/31/2024 and owned by Aravaipa Running) purchased Ultrarunning Magazine. This is (one of) the oldest and I believe only US-based print magazine dedicated to trail and ultra running. The publiciation has been around in some form since 1981 and offers one of the most comprehensive calendar of ultra running events in North America including results listings. UR Magazine has also published the popular but somewhat controversial ‘Ultra Runner of the Year’ Award since its inception. An annual award of the best North American Ultra Runner.

With a combined 14 Hardrock finishes Jamil and his brother Nick own over 1% of all Hardrock finishes.

To recap:

• Jamil and family own (by event) the largest trail race organization in the US (maybe even the world).
• Jami and family own the largest (by number of events streamed) trail race live broadcasting company in the US (maybe even the world).
• Jamil and family now own the US’s only print publication and popular website dedicated to trail and ultra running.

I genuinely do not know what this all means for other trail race organizations in the regions Aravaipa operates in or across the country. And I have no clue how this impacts other media businesses in our space, like iRunFar and Freetrail.

But I do know that this puts Jamil and family into a VERY powerful position to shape the future of our sport and I’m sure glad Jamil’s last name is not Poletti.