Italy's Bernard Dematteis (© Organisers)
Madessimo, ItalyThere are just a few days left until Mountain Running's most important event of the year, the World Championships on Sunday 6 September.
A few of the highlights at this year's event include:
- 25th anniversary of the founding of the WMRA – formerly ICMR – the organization, that is taking the lead for mountain running worldwide.
- 25th anniversary of the World Championships – formerly called “World Trophy” – the most important mountain running worldwide event.
- And sadly, it will be the first event without Danny Hughes, who started this worldwide mountain running movement.
35 countries with 72 women, 148 men, 49 junior women and 76 junior men runners have entered the Championships. These are not record numbers, but there is also an aspect that was agreed to in order to get the Championships title; IAAF recognises only one Great Britain team and so we have lost four traditional teams: England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
The competition is expected to be at the highest level – the new generation represented by Italian brothers Dematteis and Elisa Desco, brother and sister Kosovelj from Slovenia, Kusuro from Uganda, Martina Strahl from Suisse and many others, are knocking on the door.
On the other hand, the “established runners” such as Anna Pichrtova, Melisa Moon, Jonathan Wyatt, Marco Degasperi and Gaiardo and many others are still in excellent form.
New countries have also joined the international mountain running family – times when almost half of the medals were reserved for Italians have passed – Turkish runners led by 3-times European champion Arslan are coming closer, runners from Africa and South America are becoming stronger.
Come, enjoy and celebrate the 25th World Mountain Running Championships in Campodolcino-Madessimo, Italy.
Tomo Sarf for WMRA