Post by World Athletics

Natacha Manchado, Running Project Manager At this time of the year, mountain and trail running community is all focused on the Olympic Valley, in California. With two of the biggest and most eccentric global races happening in a row – Broken Arrow Skyrace (which is part of the WMRA World Cup) and Western States Endurance Run– the iconic Palisades Tahoe also hosts the TrailCon, a trail running conference that combines panels and activations of the industry leading brands. During these last days, I had the opportunity to be among this community, putting World Athletics as one of the credible interlocutors in this ecosystem. On 22nd June, I shared the stage with two very vocal professional athletes, Anna Gibson and Francesco Puppi (who is also co-founder of the Professional Trail Runners Association, and member of our Advisory Group on Mountain and Trail Running), and we brought to the audience important discussions related to the growth of the sport, passing through our World Mountain and Trail Running Championships – now much more meaningful for the global scenario, and keep gaining traction within the community – as well as potential future opportunities as an Olympic discipline. We also spoke about responsibilities that come together with this growth, such as the need of establishing a global out-of-competition antidoping programme, global rankings and calendars, all of these actions that World Athletics is seen as the natural entity to lead on, as per the essence of any global governing body. I left Palisades Tahoe refueled by the energy of this outstanding community, certain (and proud!) of the great work that we are doing in this space and even more motivated to keep helping the sport on its continuous evolvement. Onwards and upwards! N.B.: 2026 Broken Arrow Skyrace featured the largest total prize purse ($150,000) of any independent (non-corporate) trail race in the world and the largest winner’s purse ($30,000) of any trail race in the world. Winners of the flagship Broken Arrow 23K and of the Uphill, both races part of the WMRA World Cup, took home $30,000 and $6,000, respectively.