WMRA 40th Anniversary Letter
Dear Mountain Running friends,
In 2024, World Mountain Running Association (WMRA) is celebrating the 40th anniversary.
Using this opportunity, we would shortly like to present our organization and activities.
History
WMRA was founded on 29. Sept. 1984 in Zogno/Italy as “International Committee Mountain Running”. Founding members were coming from five European countries: GBR, SUI, SMR, AUT and ITA. Italian De Biassi was elected as president and Hughes from ENG as the secretary; after De Biassi retired in 1999, Hughes was elected as the president.
The goal of the new Organization was developing the sport of MR worldwide and organization of the international competition system. The first “World Trophy” was organized already in Sept. 1985 in San Vigilo in Italy. 115 runners from 10 countries were present. Next year 156 runners from 15 counties met in Morbegno, also Italy. Later the event was organized every year, moving from Europe also to North and South America, Asia and Oceania.
In 2008 IAAF approved the change of the name of this WMRA premier event from “World Trophy” to “World Championships”, recognized by the IAAF.
The last event was held in 2019 in Patagonia/Argentina; after that the event developed into the “World Mountain and Trail Running Championships”.
In 1989 the name of ICMR was changed to World Mountain Running Association (WMRA). Since that year, WMRA was allowed to use “IAAF patronage” in the logo. Mountain running was formally introduced as part of athletics with the IAAF constitution in 2003. Because of its close connection to IAAF (now WA), the WMRA seat is formally connected to the WA offices.
The governing body of the organization is the Congress, that meets during the World Championships.
Elected Council with the president, secretary, treasurer and 5 Council members is responsible for the operation of the organization.
At the beginning, two disciplines were recognized: “Short”, later renamed to “up&downhill” and “long”, recognized also as “uphill”. Later the names and the distances were changing but generally, in mountain running, there are still two basic disciplines: “up&downhill” (today called also “classic”) and “uphill”. Classic distances for mountain running races are up to 15km, even 20km. Long distance races are on the distances up to the marathon distance. The courses should be well marked and safe and the runners do not need to take with them water and energy supplies – this should be provided by the race organizers. For safety reasons, poles are generally also not allowed. All those details make the small differences to “trail running” where the runners are more self-sufficient, also allowed to use ski poles and running also much longer distances.
According to the Constitution, WMRA members are national athletic federations that have paid the WMRA membership fee. The benefits of the WMRA membership are:
- Member federations are invited to the Congress with the right to apply for the positions in the Council, to talk and to vote. This allows the members to active create the development of this sport worldwide.
- to have the possibility to have members in the Athletes Commission and with this again the possibility to be active in the International Mountain running community,
- to send teams to the Int.U18 Cup and get travel support.
There is also another group of WMRA members – International MR races could apply for the “Associate membership” – paying the fee, they get the right to be presented in our Calendar and get a preview and report on our web page and social channels. Those races also included into the Ranking system.
Nowadays International Mountain Running Calendar consists of:
- Events organized by WMRA:
- International MR U18 Cup – annual event; since 2006
- World MR Masters Championships – in a partnership with WMA; annual event, since 1998
- World Cup (from 1999 – 2013 called Grand prix) – nowadays “WMRA premium product.”
- “World Mountain and Trail Running Championships”; WMRA is one of the 3 organizing partners (together with ITRA and IUA, in cooperation with WA; organized in 2022-2023-2025; every 2 years)
- Continental MR Championships
- Europe European Off-road Running Championships, organized by European Athletics, organized in the years with no World Championships);
- in North America it is NACAC etc.
- WMRA council members involved as technical support.
WMRA Ranking
WMRA is also taking care for the WMRA Ranking – transparent system of evaluating runners’ capacities, respecting the results of over 100 races all over the world in last 52 weeks.
In 2024 we would like to introduce some changes into the structure of the Ranking.
As you might know, races that are included into the Ranking, are divided into 4 groups, with different scoring. In the group A, where the winner gets 100 points, are the World Championships. Group B, where the winners get 50pts, are World Cup races and European Championships. Some other more important international races are in the group C and national championships and some other international races are in the group D. Our goal is to include into the Ranking as many as possible National Mountain Running Championships, no matter about the level of runners and the development of mountain running in the country. With this letter we would like to invite you to send us information about your National Mountain Running Championships, or at least to send us the contact of the person who should be our contact to get this information.
Letter from Tomo Šarf, President of the World Mountain Running Association, for the 40th Anniversary.