View From The Edge | Spartan Trail World Championship snubs the UTMB and UTWT – both can no longer hide behind the sport’s ‘amateur values’
- Spartan Trail World Championship’s challenge to the status quo will snowball ultra runners away from amateurism
When obstacle course race behemoth Spartan announced they would be organising trail races, runners rolled their eyes. To make matters worse, it would be yet another “world championship”. Here was one more non-trail running company to add to the bandwagon vying for a piece of the pie. What could they offer trail running that it does not already have? They were here to take from the growing market and give little back.
The Spartan Trail World Championship includes prestigious races like the Lavaredo Ultra Trail in Italy, Patagonia Run in Argentina, Transgrancanaria in Spain, Fjällmaraton in Sweden and Kodiak Big Bear in the United States. The series winner takes home US$10,000 ((HK$77,700) and the winner of each individual race, known as regional races, takes home US$5,000. The races are paid to be part of the world championship, too.
“We want to see athletes better rewarded. And we want to bring races from other geographies and give them the opportunity to share the benefits of being part of the tour, without having to pay to be part of it,” Mariano Alvarez, the CEO of Spartan Trail, said.
Trail running is at a cross roads between amateurism and professionalism. The top athletes are full-time professionals, but rarely, if ever, are rewarded in cash for winning. In most cases, this is because races do not make enough money to share their profits. But in some cases, particularly the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB), they hide behind latent amateurism to justify their low prize money.
