What The TROY (And UROY) Awards Get Wrong

Every year the trail running world gathers to celebrate its top athletes for Freetrail’s TROY and Ultrarunning Magazine’s UROY and every year the online world gathers to debate and argue if the order by which the athletes are ranked feels fair and correct. Of course there are biases, everyone has them. We favor athletes based on the regions we live in. Or by which race distance we favor ourselves and know most about. Or because we heard someone say something cool on a podcast. Biases are valid to a point. Even the Oscars enrage people every year because their favorite movie or star was overlooked.

But just because biases are real we shouldn’t aim to create a celebration and recognition that’s fair and deserving for the people on the list and for the fan who follow along. We will never please everyone, that’s for sure. Further, I doubt that at this point being ranked on any of these lists really gives significant contract negotiation power, or even bonuses, but it’s worth considering that if you’re name is “in the media” it’s always a good thing for you and your sponsor. These awards do hold value.

So, what are the problems and how do we fix it?

With TROY Freetrail tried addressing the biggest glaring shortcoming of Ultrarunning Magazine’s UROY : UROY only considers North American runners and TROY is international. But by going international TROY created two problems:

1. it’s hard to follow performances from all over the world. (And to be fair, the Freetrail folks acknowledge that.)
2. once you look beyond the US, the sport gets more diverse. Historically in North American the 100 mile ultra distance was favored and considered the crown jewel of racing, so UROY was able to essentially just look at that distance for consideration. But by TROY taking an international approach judges found themselves comparing apples to oranges, VK races to Barkley finishes (at the extremes).

The other problem I see with both awards is that “the runner of the year” is too broad of a statement and too vague. It always creates tension, and an unnecessary tension that is, to compare a Barkley finish to a Golden Trail performance. Runners who focus on the 100 mile distance aren’t competing as often as folks on shorter racing circuits. If someone races 15 times in a year and does well in some of the events it’s worth calling it a season, but if someone ran one amazing 100 miler is that their year? Of course, the folks who get to vote know this. And they struggle with this and the public debates this and they get mad. The aim is to crown the “greatest”, but it’s too simplistic that too many variables can’t be considered. There’s beauty in the fringes and in the diversity, and that should be celebrated.

The solution, or at least the one I’m offering:

The Golden Globes/Academy Awards do two things well:

• They breaks the awards in different categories that allow different skills and projects to be highlighted¹.
• And they consider an individual performance over an entire year of performances.

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Here’s what I think would make more sense:

Preselect the top 3-10 (depending on competitiveness of the category) women and men in the following categories, and announce just the winners (and maybe the runner ups) in each:

• 200mile+ performance
• 100K/100M performance
• 50M/50K performance
• Short race (sub ultra) performance
• FKT/personal project
• Most inspiring/jaw-dropping performance
• Newcomer performance of the year²
• Lifetime achievement award²

This can be massaged of course, but you get the idea. By focusing on performance and by breaking things up by distance one could be more fair to the athletes focusing on their favorite discipline. Very few athletes compete in short and long distances and do well in either (Kilian aside), so throwing them all into the same pot fees unfair to the athlete.

I believe that this type of ‘award show’ would create just as much buzz in the media and gets people talking and celebrating the efforts by the folks being nominated and ultimately winning. Maybe I’m wrong and I’m overlooking something. I’m sure it’s not perfect, but it would be something different and new.

A big side bar here:

Last year during “award season” I had already worked on these thoughts. I had even come up with a name for these awards and thought I might run it for this year. Then I opted instead for my RE:RUN 2024, focusing on stories more so than performances and individual athletes. We also had Mile & Stone entering the fray with their ‘Trail Running Awards’ and I didn’t feel we needed another one of these. See the amazing xkcd comic for reference.

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1 – I acknowledge that even the Golden Globes can be confusing when certain types of shows (The Bear) are put into the comedy category when they maybe should instead be considered a drama – but that’s for a different discussion.
2 – Freetrail does award a rookie of the year and a lifetime achievement award called the ‘Bill Dooper Spirit Award’ on their 2024 Year In Review episode with Dylan Bowman and Corinne Malcolm.