Ultra Trail World Tour: Rankings and Trends by Country
by Chase Parnell – September 23, 2019
Photos by iRunFar
It’s late-September. The pinnacle of the ultra running season, UTMB, is long gone, and the Ultra Trail World Tour rankings for the year are pretty much a lock. Only three races remain and I don’t see many of the big names coming out for Salomon Cappadocia Ultra-Trail in Turkey, Javelina Jundred in Arizona, USA, or Ultra-Trail Cape Town in South Africa.
The UTWT is known here in America, but it hasn’t quite taken hold like it has abroad. I don’t believe your average ultra running fans are pulling up the UTWT rankings after each race like NFL fans analyze the standings every Monday morning. But that’s okay, I think we’ll get there as the UTWT continues to grow. I recently became curious about how the USA was competing on the global scene and found myself perusing the rankings after UTMB to see how the big dance flipped everything on its head.
After some digging, I decided to run the numbers to selfishly better understand where the USA stacked up, but also to see which other countries have been performing well on the most important circuit in our sport.
Using “cross country style” scoring, below are the results for the past three years. By the way, if you didn’t run in high school, “cross country style” scoring is where you assign point values for the place a runner finishes in. If a runner finishes first, she will earn 1 point. Finishing 77th would earn 77 points. The top 5 runners from each country score, so obviously the country with the lowest score wins.
Before we get into it, a little on how the UTWT rankings are calculated. Your annual ranking is based on your two best finishes at races on the tour. Simple enough. Different races, however, score you different amounts of points. If you get third at UTMB (a “Series Bonus” race), that is worth more than a 3rd at Western States (a “Series” race).
Here we go.
Three Take-Aways on the Men’s Side:
First. Pau Capell and Spain are crushing.
It’s a bit of a mystery to me why Spain has all of the sudden risen to the top of the heap. I mean, they obviously have mountains in Spain, and a lot of them, but they’re not in the alps nor are they exceptionally known for their mountain culture or running generally. Kilian is from Spain though, so there’s that. It does make me wonder though if there has been a concerted effort by the Spaniards to make this happen. Is there a governing body galvanizing their talent and supporting their runners in a unique or innovative way? What caused this recent dominance? Something to keep tabs on for sure.
Second. China is rapidly improving.
In 2017, China wasn’t even in the top 5. Their top runner finished #67 overall. In 2018, they jumped up to 5th place as a “team”. And now, in 2019, they’ve found themselves in 2nd place and they have the 2nd ranked runner, Jiasheng Shen, who is only 24 years old. The consensus seems to be that ultra running is blowing up in China. Their rise in the rankings at the elite level seem to support that, with no signs of slowing down. We may very well see China at the top of the pile in 2020.
Third. USA has been strong but had a rough 2019.
Everyone is always talking about how difficult of a time Americans have at UTMB. That’s a narrative that is a bit stale and, really, not true. We’ve done quite well there if you look at the top ten finishers over the last 4-6 years as a whole. We just have never had an individual male win it outright and that doesn’t sit well with us. When looking at the UTWT rankings, we were 2nd place as a team in both 2017 and 2018. Not too shabby, am I right? We did take a bit of a dive this year though with a 4th place finish, but that really just boils down to the fact that we had an exceptionally rough year at UTMB. Jason Schlarb was our top American in 19th place in 24:27. In 2017 alone, USA had six men run faster than that.
Three Take-Aways on the Women’s Side:
First. Similar to Pau Capell and Spain, Courtney Dauwalter and the USA are absolutely dominating.
The USA has ranked #1 as a team in both 2018 and 2019 and was #3 in 2017. It’s difficult to speculate why that is. Are American women more empowered and encouraged to run ultras? Are American women just tougher, grittier? Their rival is the French, who have been nipping at their heels the last two years, but they’ve lacked that true superstar like they have on the men’s side in Thevenard or D’haene. As more and more elite level American women enter the sport, the USA is going to continue to be difficult to beat. The pipeline from NCAA collegiate running to professional ultra running is only going to improve as the sport becomes more accessible and frankly, more popular and financially lucrative.
Second. China strikes again.
Are you sensing a theme here? Again, China was a total non-factor on the women’s side in 2017, they were 5th in 2018, and now 3rd in 2019. They are improving rapidly and with a population of 1.4 billion, the talent pool is DEEP. The population of the entirety of Europe is roughly 750 million so China has twice as many people as Europe and many times more than that of an England, France, or Spain. I’m excited to see if China’s trend levels out or if they continue to skyrocket towards the top and take over the sport.
Third. What the hell happened to Australia?
The Aussies were second in 2017 and then they fell off the face of the planet in 2018 and 2019. Now granted the UTWT is very Euro-centric so it’s tough for those down under to travel all the way to Europe for the big races, but still, I’m curious how their success dried up so quickly on the international stage. Maybe 2017 was just a fluke year, I don’t know. If anyone out there has any insight on this, I’d love to hear about it in the comments section below.
Wrap-Up:
That’s it folks. I hope you enjoyed a bit of a deeper dive into the UTWT rankings and a look at the “cross country style” results. Without a doubt, you have to take these rankings with a grain of salt but I do think they’re a better indicator of a country’s overall performance than, say, the ITRA Trail World Championships, which rarely fields a country’s best squad.
I’m excited to see how things pan out over the next couple of years. Will the strength of Spain on the men’s side and the USA on the women’s side hold up? Will China continue their rise? When will the Aussies rebound? And when will we start to see African countries breaking into the top 5? Will they be the next big wave?
Only time will tell.
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