UTMB’s 2025 CSR Report

This one dropped earlier week via press announcement (English and French version) and is a good read and worth some notes. Of course – like with every CSR report – one can find niggles. One can question the metrics or the focus of it. I do think it’s a worthwhile effort for the largest trail organization to share some of their metrics and priorities.

One thing to bear in mind is that this report is not for the UTMB World Series – it doesn’t consider all their events across the Globe. This CSR report is just for UTMB Mont-Blanc – the Finals and their flagship product. This is an important distinction. As UTMB expands it becomes more and more known as “the World Series”. UTMB owns and operates (in some fashion or other) 60+ events. It seems a bit disingenuous when a company shows off just one product in their portfolio for a report like this. Kind of like if a global corporation praises how energy efficient their headquarters are without mentioning the realities of their supply chain. Or phrased differently, UTMB generates revenue in 66 locations across the globe, they should highlight and put into context these efforts across their entire portfolio of events. This is my one niggle, and as I said above it’s easy to find one with these reports.

But, this aside, let’s look at some of their numbers and efforts organizing this massive event around Mont-Blanc each year and how it affects the communities and our larger trail community.

From the introduction to their report (page 5):

Defend the connection to nature. Preserve the human and local dimension. Leave no one behind. Foster diversity, inclusion and the bonds between people.

What trail race organization has a mission statement? And one that is considered and elevated and not just screams “don’t die”? I especially love the sentence “leave no one behind”. As our sport grows and professionalize the media spectacle continues to highlight the exciting spear end of elite athletes. To build an organization that considers every athlete (which gives them money in form of entry fees) is the proper approach and a worth reminder.

(Page 16):

For several years, the HOKA UTMB Mont-Blanc has been developing an inclusion and diversity policy aimed at making its events accessible to all, including athletes with disabilities (visual, intellectual or physical).

I want to highlight this effort once more. I witnessed firsthand their adaptive team racing when running OCC in 2024 and found it absolutely mad and exciting and wonderful. This was just a great addition to the race and took nothing away from anyone else running the same trail. I loved it.

(Page 18):

“foster[ing] lasting connections between volunteers, residents, local organisations and the host territories it passes through.”

As UTMB has grown over the years this is obviously a fine balance they must strike between the event itself getting bigger and bigger and the communities they operate in not really having asked for any of this. And while their Finals are the biggest event in their portfolio there are similar challenges in every community around the world they operate in. In these communities the balance between the size of the organization putting on the event and the community that supports is even more out of whack. There they can’t even play the ‘we are local here too’ card. I’d love to know what learnings from Chamonix they are taking to their other events in their Series.

(Page 23):

Measuring the event’s carbon footprint

Many folks have pointed this out in various ways that measuring one’s carbon footprint is really a fool’s errand. It ends up shaming us into feeling guilty about every breath we take while large corporations and militaries around the world abuse their size at a scale that dwarfs every yogurt container we recycle. But it’s a metric we have, and maybe it’s better than doing nothing?

For race organizations the largest contributor to CO2 output is always the ‘transport’ to the event, so everything that the race organization does on the ground (recycling, reusing, public transportation) will barely move the needle. For UTMB to ONLY consider the transportation to the Finals when every runner had to qualify at one of their events is the perfect example where some of their efforts in this report fall short of showing the full picture. As an organization that requires these qualification races and owns them on top of it they should find a way to acknowledge this in their report.

(Page 27):

The HOKA UTMB Mont-Blanc has implemented a dedicated system to support participants, volunteers, companions and spectators in accessing collective transport solutions that reduce the carbon impact of on-site travel and road congestion.

I have no notes here. The system they created is great and exactly the sort of solution that benefits the communities around the mountain, the runners who are coming from far and don’t even want to drive a personal car and figure out parking and complicated maps. Absolutely worth every effort UTMB puts into this, and something every race of scale should be inspired by.

(Page 42):

Understanding economic repercussions
… for every €1 invested by local authorities, the event generates around €40 to €45 in local economic impact.

What incredible numbers to show of and share with any stakeholder in the region. Any event organizer would lick their lips if they’d be responsible for these sort of figures. Yes, FIFA and the IOC claim similar astronomical numbers that never actually materialize but this is an annual event and their actual infrastructure investments are minimal compared to these mega organizations, so I am inclined to believe UTMB here.

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While I might’ve not been the target audience for this report, I massively appreciate UTMB collecting these numbers and sharing their focus and efforts.