World Cup announcement from the World Mountain Running Association (WMRA). Above photo by Marco Gulberti. ATRA founder Nancy Hobbs is a member of the WMRA Council.
The World Mountain Running Association is pleased to present the 2021 World Cup calendar with events in the United States, Poland, Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, France and Austria.
What is especially pleasing is the level of interest and positivity from these races and athletes about the possibilities of racing in 2021. We know and expect the challenges of COVID-19 to be with us during 2021 and with new measures of safety and adapting to travel restrictions the WMRA is ready to work with the races in order to run the series and have exciting opportunities for our mountain running athletes to race each other on some exciting courses in spectacular locations.
Being adaptable and working together has been the concept for next year’s event as well as an earlier launch to allow for best planning possible. It has been a pleasure seeing how all of our race applicants are committed to the sport.
We are also very excited to see such great support from long time World Cup supporters as well as new races wanting to join us on our World Cup journey. WMRA have decided to continue the format of offering 3 race categories with category champions as well as overall World Cup champions that was proposed in 2020.
Photo (c) Mike Scott 2019.
We have 12 event locations in 8 countries with 16 races across the 3 categories. There are 3 Vertical Up races, 7 Classic Mountain races and 6 Long mountain races that offer an incredible variety of terrain and landscapes.
The World Cup points rules have been modified to take account of the number of races we are offering. We have a great mix of iconic, new (to the World Cup) as well as very experienced race events in the 2021 edition of the World Cup that the mountain running community can enjoy and share.
Three iconic mountain races at Sierre-Zinal (Switzerland), Grossglockner (Austria) and the Broken Arrow Skyrace (United States) come back in 2021.
There are races that join the World Cup for the first time. Here we have under the shadow of Mt Blanc in the French Alps La Monte’e du Nid d’Aigle join us. We welcome three new events for the World Cup in the eastern area of Europe where we have two of these in the Tatra Mountains of Poland (Tatra Sky Marathon and Tatra Race Run) and then the experienced Mountain event organisers at the Krkonosky half marathon in the Czech Republic. Italy has more competitions than ever before with Lagunc in Chiavenna who will host the final race of the year in October, we visit Southern Italy with the Trofeo Ciolo.
Trofeo Nasego with many years of mountain running experience hosts two races. The World Cup will travel to Spain for the first time in 2021 with two venues and four races. One in the Basque region (Zumaia-Gipuzkoa) where the passion for sport is always very strong and then Canfranc that is in the beautiful Pyrenean mountains. So it’s an exciting line-up kicking off on June 20 and running through until October 10.
The races are all open for every runner to participate and join in the World Cup competition. The more races you run, the more points you will get towards a higher World Mountain Ranking. The WMRA would like to wish all people involved the best of health in these difficult times.
Here is the full list of races in the WMRA’s 2021 Mountain Running World Cup:
