The UTMB Index

Following the way UTMB has used their Index in the last few months to highlight registered runners ahead of a race in their press announcements I noticed an interesting side effect of the Index that I hadn’t considered before.

I only thought of the Index to rank top runners post race, and of course as a qualifying tool for upcoming events, but with races all over the world, UTMB is able to highlight top runners in countries far away from the media circus. The Index is a valuable tool to discover and highlight these athletes.

Our media landscape is very regional. German media focuses on German runners, French on French, the US on US runners. That’s not a knock, just somewhat of a reality. But this also somewhat skews what runners become known or get the attention from the media, especially if a region’s media has an outsized presence in our sport.

With this Index UMTB has a tool to watch as runners sign up for their races, check their Index, and rank them pre-race and announce and highlight these runners even if they come from countries without a big media presence in our sport.

Kinda smart.