UTMB’s 2024 Season

For the year end UTMB shares some numbers, figures and stories highlighting their 2024 season. Here are a few that stuck out to me:

134,393 runners, 29% women (increase from 25% last year)

An increase is something to celebrate, yes, but this is still a far cry from proper gender parity and will need a lot more work to be done.

234, 944 running stones collected

If 134,393 runners collected 234, 944 stones that would mean 1.75 stones on average per race per runner. I bet there are a few other interesting stats one could derive from these numbers.

2,024 events with UTMB Index

This number, I believe is WAY down. When I checked this last (and that’s been over 2 years ago by now) I counted around 5,000 events on that list. Given the fact that UTMB made the inclusion in their index free and – even simpler – than the ITRA point system, this makes me think that either race directors aren’t interested in feeding their results into the UTMB system, or that even the simplest system is just another step that race directors in the end don’t want to be bothered with. But in either case, it’s the runners who would have to force the issue, if they care about getting their Index at independent races they’d ask for it and RDs would deliver that for them. I believe offering the UTMB Index to independent races was a genius idea by UTMB, but it’s almost too clever – currently, with the World Series still so new – most runners want stones and are willing to race UTMB events. Racing non-stone races, just for the Index isn’t high on people’s minds so far.

UTMBs’ social media team also expanded on these numbers with some humorous “wrapped-style” posts on Instagram. My favorite:

43,785 ‘One last piece of cheese before getting back to the race.’ were said by runners on swiss checkpoints. For 68% of them, it wasn’t actually the last one…

That was 100% me in Trient at OCC this year.