Danish ultrarunner Stine Rex has been racking up high-level performances in ultrarunning for years, however her 2024 performances symbolize a step forward for each her and the game. Nonetheless, considered one of her efforts has additionally uncovered the rising pains that may occur when a sport progresses so shortly that its organizers and directors can’t sustain.
Firstly of September 2024, Rex reset the ladies’s six-day world document, operating 913.606 kilometers (567.688 miles) on the 2024 6 dagsløb i Åbybro race in her residence nation. This document continues to be awaiting ratification, as is a standard a part of the method for operating data and a standard timeline.
Earlier this yr, on the 2024 BUFF/GOMU 48-Hour World Championships in Hungary, Rex set a ladies’s 48-hour world document of 435.564 kilometers (270.646 miles). However now, many months later, Rex’s effort has not been ratified and is as a substitute the middle of an unresolved ratification debacle.
We spoke to some events concerned on this complicated case, which serves as a cautionary story to runners and occasion organizers, and tried to find out if this record-breaking run can ever be ratified.
Stine Rex on the best way to setting a brand new six-day document on the 2024 6 dagsløb i Åbybro. Photograph: Simon Haugaard
Stine Rex’s Ladies’s 48-Hour World Report on the 2024 BUFF/GOMU 48-Hour World Championships
The 2024 BUFF/GOMU 48-Hour World Championships passed off on the weekend of Could 31 in Hungary. GOMU stands for the World Group of Multi-Day Ultramarathoning. As talked about above, Rex set a brand new ladies’s 48-hour world document by overlaying 435.564k (270.646 miles). This distance bettered, by 228 meters, the mark of 435.366k (270.505 miles) set by Camille Herron (U.S) on the 2023 Sri Chinmoy 48-Hour Competition in Australia.
Not solely that, however second place Irina Masanova (Russia) ran 434.912k (270.2 miles), solely 652 meters behind Rex and the third-longest distance recorded so far in a ladies’s 48-hour race. In third place was Viktória Brown (Hungary, lives in Canada), with 405.0k, making it a historic three ladies who surpassed 400k in a single occasion.
To additional illustrate the current rise in performances at 48 hours, previous to this race, solely three ladies had damaged 400k for 48 hours — Herron, Poland’s Patrycja Bereznowska (3 times), and Jo Zakrzewski (U.Ok.).
There was a lot pleasure throughout social media and media retailers following this occasion, about each Rex’s record-setting efficiency and the depth of its ladies’s competitors.
Stine Rex on the 2024 BUFF/GOMU 48-Hour World Championships. Photograph: Runion/Pápai Heni
Within the males’s race, Poland’s Bartosz Fudali ran 447.2k (277.9 miles), Nicolas de las Heras (Spain) lined 441.3k (269.6 miles), and Beda Szabolcs of Hungary went 433.9k (269.6 miles). These three distances had been the fourth, fifth, and sixth finest recorded in a males’s 48-hour race, behind three distances from the legendary Greek runner Yiannis Kouros, whose males’s 48-hour world document of 473.495k (294.296 miles), set in 1996, continues to be held in reverence.
Some eyebrows had been raised concerning the giant will increase in private bests over 48 hours by a number of of the athletes. Nonetheless, for context, males’s winner Fudali had a earlier 48-hour private better of 433.3k (269.2 miles), set when successful the 2024 Taipei 48-Hour Ultramarathon. He was additionally third behind Harvey Lewis within the 2023 Massive Canine’s Yard Extremely.
Second-place de las Heras has a 24-hour private better of 261.6k (162.6 miles) from the 2023 IAU 24-Hour European Championships. Szabolcs in third place had a earlier 48-hour private better of 410.3k (255.0 miles) from 2022. He additionally received the 2023 EMU Six Day World Trophy with 803.7k (499.4 miles).
The ultimate three (left to proper), Bartosz Fudali, Ihor Verys, and Harvey Lewis, on the 2023 Massive Canine’s Yard Extremely. Photograph: Mike Trimpe
Rex, though solely having a earlier 48-hour better of 335.7k from 2018, does have a 24-hour private better of 245.9k (152.8 miles), set when putting fifth within the 2023 IAU 24-Hour World Championships. Masanova was operating her first 48-hour race, however got here into it with a 24-hour private better of 247.9k (154.1 miles). Brown, in third place for the ladies, had a earlier 48-hour better of 349.7k (217.3 miles).
If you put a gaggle of high quality athletes collectively in a single race, historical past reveals that, regardless of the distance, the collective effort pushes them to nice performances. That was undoubtedly the case for this occasion, in each the ladies’s and males’s races.
Problems With Ratifying Stine Rex’s Ladies’s 48-Hour World Report
The performances from Hungary took 48-hour operating to a brand new degree. Nonetheless, the occasion didn’t look like sanctioned by the Hungarian Athletics Affiliation (MASZ) or have acquired a label from the Worldwide Affiliation of Ultrarunners (IAU).
Some readers might imagine, No large deal, what’s the downside right here? It’s a world championships occasion, with athletes operating phenomenal distances. Let’s have fun. Nonetheless, the IAU is the worldwide physique that ratifies and retains data for most traditional extremely distances. Having an IAU label at any ultra-distance race is a prerequisite for a efficiency to be ratified for each rankings and data.
This isn’t a novel scenario. Earlier this yr, the French athlete Marie-Ange Brumelot surpassed the present ladies’s 100k European document, and have become solely the second lady to interrupt seven hours, operating 6:56:54. The occasion in France, the 2024 100km à Pied de Steenwerck, didn’t have a allow from the French federation or an IAU label, so it Brumelot’s run was ineligible for ratification.
What Is the IAU, and What Is an IAU Label?
The IAU has developed through the years to be the worldwide extremely physique — acknowledged by each World Athletics and regional our bodies like USA Monitor and Subject and European Athletics — to stage and promote world championships for the 50k, 100k, and 24-hour occasions. It additionally works with the Worldwide Path Operating Affiliation and World Mountain Operating Affiliation, which respectively administer the sports activities of path operating and mountain operating, to stage the World Mountain and Path Operating Championships (WMTRC).
The beginning of the 2023 Path World Championships 80k. Photograph: iRunFar/Meghan Hicks
The IAU additionally works to ratify and preserve absolute and masters age group data for extremely distances in any respect the principle occasions from 50k by to 6 days.
The IAU labeling system has developed to make sure sure fundamental organizational requirements are met. As with allowing for any monitor, highway, path, and mountain race world wide, it ensures uniformity and equity. It additionally alerts athletes that the organizers have these fundamental necessities in place. The IAU doesn’t make large calls for earlier than issuing a license, solely 4 principal ones:
- The occasion should first have a license from the native nationwide federation, and comply with the nationwide federation’s guidelines.
- For a point-to-point highway course, or a paved lapped occasion, the course will need to have been measured by a federation-qualified course measurer with the course measurement certificates out there for all to see.
- A suitably certified federation-approved referee, with judges as required, should be appointed prematurely.
- Additionally, if acceptable, handbook timekeepers appearing as a backup to any chip timing system should oversee the occasion. For document functions, handbook timekeeping is required as a vital backup, and the referee should additionally make sure the course raced is identical as what was measured. For a loop course, that is important as a small discrepancy in course structure can result in considerably roughly distance being raced.
For the 2024 2024 BUFF/GOMU 48-Hour World Championships, we’ve seen a measurement report undertaken by Péter Pignitzky, an Affiliation of Worldwide Marathons and Distance Races/World Athletics grade B measurer. GOMU advised us that Pignitzky was a certified referee, ticking two key packing containers. Sadly, for the reason that occasion passed off, Pignitzky has handed away.
Nonetheless, neither a MASZ sanction nor an IAU label was issued earlier than the race, and it’s this incontrovertible fact that’s prevented Rex’s distance from being eligible for ratification. Since nationwide federation permits and IAU labels are a standard prevalence, the query is, what occurred on this occasion?
The reply to this query is proving considerably tough to acquire, however we’ll spend the remainder of this text exploring what we all know up to now.
Who Truly Organized the Race?
An area membership referred to as the Balatonfüredi Atlétikai Membership organized the race, and integrated the GOMU 48-Hour World Championships inside it. The membership is listed as affiliated with MASZ on its web site. The membership’s web site signifies that they set up many occasions.
The allowing subject appears to heart across the relationship with the native organizers and MASZ, and a few stipulations for the occasion that the federation was implementing. Mate Baranyai, the native organizing coordinator, when requested for remark, mentioned:
“Nobody is aware of or understands, together with GOMU and the IAU, why the federation has not issued a allow. MASZ didn’t give causes for the rejection. My athletics membership is Balatonfüredi Atlétikai Membership, and the competitors organized by me, for the previous three years, known as the Balatonfüredi UltraFutó Fesztivál (BUFF). Yearly, we acquired a bronze label from the IAU, and in 2021, it performed the function of the Hungarian 48-Hour [National] Championships.”
He went on, “The affiliation is aware of my membership’s popularity for operating wonderful competitions that adhere to all IAU and World Athletics guidelines and rules. We couldn’t perceive the delay in sanctioning, so we requested the IAU for assist. This passed off over a number of months, and we’re nonetheless in ongoing negotiations to try to resolve it.”
Baranyai continued, “A month earlier than the competitors, GOMU and I advised the athletes that there was no [IAU] label, however they wished to come back anyway. It was the biggest and strongest 48-hour discipline within the sport’s historical past. We had 5 world age group data and Stine Rex’s total, legit 48-hour document. We organized for her to be drug examined after the occasion as properly.”
We requested MASZ for remark however haven’t acquired a reply.
What’s GOMU and How Does It Relate to This Story?
In keeping with the GOMU web site, “The World Group of Multi-Day Ultramarathoning (GOMU) tracks and maintains data for all customary and non-standard multi-day distances/instances for ladies and men. We set up the GOMU multi-day world championships, the place athletes can contest these data and be impressed to transcend their limits. We embrace the previous to encourage our future.”
Matthieu Bonne and Zsuzsanna Maràz, winners of the 2024 GOMU-EMU Six Day World Championships. Photograph: GOMU-EMU Six Day World Championships
The group’s president is Canadian-born Trishul Cherns, an skilled multi-day runner himself. Talking with iRunFar, he mentioned, “A couple of years in the past, myself and others had been involved that the IAU was not giving sufficient credence to multi-day occasions.”
Though the IAU was organizing and selling what Cherns regards as shorter extremely championships properly and ratifying data in any respect distances, they didn’t appear considering selling longer multi-day occasions.
“That’s why GOMU got here into being,” mentioned Cherns, “to assist promote the longer multi-day occasions from 48 hours upward. We’ve got promoted earlier 48-hour and six-day occasions as world championships. Increasingly individuals are embracing multi-day races, and we really feel that’s the manner ahead, to lift the profile and improve participation for all and enhance requirements on the elite finish.”
Requested concerning the points with not having a allow for an occasion billed as a world championships, he mentioned, “All of the athletes had been made conscious of the labeling scenario 4 weeks earlier than the race. We advised them every part else was in place, however we had been open and clear that we didn’t but have an IAU label. The athletes nonetheless wished to come back, as they valued competing towards one another…”
Cherns continued, “The suggestions I get from runners after the race is improbable. They’re telling us, ‘So long as you guys ratify it, if GOMU ratifies any data and lists them within the GOMU-approved, multi-day data, that’s all tremendous with us.’ We placed on the best 48-hour race ever, with some improbable performances, and the athletes clearly need such a competitors with one another.”
As beforehand talked about, this occasion arguably offered probably the most aggressive 48-hour race ever seen. GOMU’s imaginative and prescient to supply that have for the runners can also be not doubtful. Nonetheless, that also doesn’t reply the query of why the IAU might not ratify the document.
When requested what he has to say to some skilled extremely observers, who admit that GOMU has good concepts and intentions and that their hearts are in the appropriate place, however that possibly they need to be slightly extra affected person and permit an extended lead time into occasions to keep away from a repetition of the problems skilled in Hungary, he responded:
“We had the persistence of Job on this one. The method of working with MASZ, with the IAU’s help, began in November 2023 and dragged on till days earlier than the [event], which was held on the finish of Could/early June.”
He continued, “Our lead time was seven months, and it shouldn’t be seen as an indication of impatience or that we weren’t permitting an extended lead time, as others have instructed. MASZ … is the social gathering that brought on delays by stringing [the local organizing coordinator] Mr. Barayani alongside and requesting greater than the IAU’s standards, which stumped us all.”
Cherns added, “The athletes need these races, so we’re going to preserve staging them.”
Since our dialog, GOMU has efficiently staged the 2024 GOMU-EMU Six Day World Championships in September in Hungary, which did have an IAU silver label, the place Mathieu Bonne set a brand new males’s six-day document. GOMU additionally has a 2025 six-day world championships in France subsequent April.
Matthieu Bonne on his technique to setting a males’s six-day world document on the 2024 GOMU-EMU Six Day World Championships. Photograph: GOMU-EMU Six Day World Championships
“We’ve got additionally simply agreed to stage the following GOMU 48-hour world championships in Poland on the [UltraPark Weekend 48 Hour] on the weekend of April 30 to Could 1, 2025,” Cherns added, “and the first-ever 72-hour world championships subsequent September, once more with the Balatonfüredi organizers [in Hungary].”
Are the GOMU World Championships Real Championships?
So, are the GOMU world championships real championships occasions? That relies on the place you might be coming from. IAU championships occasions have World Athletics and nationwide federation backing. GOMU doesn’t. That mentioned, it appears obvious that the IAU, on this case, has been attempting to help GOMU with the labeling subject as finest they will.
At current, GOMU doesn’t have hyperlinks with nationwide federations providing invites to ship groups, as occurs with the IAU 24-Hour World Championships, IAU 100k World Championships, and the World Athletics-supported World Mountain and Path Operating Championships.
GOMU has a bidding course of in place to host its world championship occasions. Bids are open yearly from November 1 till March 31 of the next yr. For instance, purposes to host its world championships occasions in 2026 will open in November 2024 and shut on March 31, 2025. The GOMU organizing committee critiques every utility and votes on the most effective venue.
Presently, the best way it appears to work is that athletes simply enter the races as regular and type their very own groups, with no backing or choice standards laid down or help given by their nationwide federations.
Cherns says, “The athletes who come to our GOMU world championships should not chosen by the nationwide federations, regardless of our efforts to provoke a dialogue [with the various national federations] … Right now, GOMU chooses to supply self-selected open races that cater to our strong world multi-day household of athletes, hungry for recognition and inclusion. This technique additionally accommodates elite age-group athletes unlikely to be chosen for a federation-selected nationwide workforce.”
Though Cherns says GOMU has reached out to a number of nationwide federations to help its world championships occasions, he has not been met with any tangible response up to now, making these 48-hour and six-day championships arguably championships of their title solely, though valued by the collaborating athletes.
Runners Beware and Plan When Aiming for Data
In some methods, Rex’s scenario just isn’t distinctive. Two current examples come to thoughts. As talked about earlier than, in 2024, the French athlete Brumelot surpassed the present ladies’s 100k European document and have become solely the second lady to interrupt seven hours, operating 6:56:54. The occasion at which she raced didn’t have a French federation or IAU allow, so the time was unable to be ratified for document functions.
Nice Britain’s Sarah Webster additionally had a ladies’s 100k European document unable to be ratified however for a barely totally different cause. In March 2023, she ran her first 100k on the 100k British Nationwide Championships in Northern Eire. Surpassing most individuals’s expectations, together with the organizers, she ran 7:03:40. This was inside the present ladies’s 100k European document of seven:04:03, set by French runner Florianne Scorching, when successful the 2022 IAU 100k World Championships in Germany. On that event, an IAU label and all different technical necessities had been in place, however no drug testing was out there, which means that though her efficiency seems in rankings, it was inadmissible as a European document.
This spring, when operating the 100k British Nationwide Championships on the 2024 Sri Chinmoy 100k occasion in Perth, Scotland, the organizers organized for doping management. Webster ran 7:03:48, and now this ladies’s 100k European document ratification is pending. Different examples exist through the years, too, and lengthen past ultrarunning.
Sarah Webster (left), alongside Carla Molinaro, and Andrea Pomaranski, when she took third on the 2023 IAU 50k World Championships. Photograph courtesy of the IAU.
The message for athletes is obvious. Though organizers at all times try to have every part in place, runners with any probability or aspiration to set a document of any type — nationwide, age group, or world — ought to do some homework to make sure all is in place earlier than committing to an occasion.
The 2024 lululemon FURTHER six-day occasion in California this spring, though in some methods a manufactured, stand-alone occasion, went to meticulous lengths to make sure all was in place beforehand for document ratification. The organizers labored with USA Monitor and Subject to make sure that runners knew any data set might be ratified.
Equally, the 2024 GOMU-EMU Six Day World Championships held in Hungary in September 2024, the place Bonne reset the lads’s six-day world document, was sanctioned by MASZ and issued an IAU label.
What Is the Path Ahead?
Sooner or later, as with different main championships, securing and making certain the help of host nation federations would appear to be the important thing to the credible progress and additional recognition of multi-day championships. As with all sport, as occasions and participation develop, governance and steering will at all times be wanted to assist form this in an orderly style.
The fact is that though participation in multi-day operating is rising, the participation numbers fall manner in need of the numbers at marathon, 100k, and even 24-hour occasions — not to mention the worldwide explosion in ultra-distance path races and mountain races.
Federations, though sympathetic and sometimes working with very tight budgets throughout the entire range of athletic occasions, will take some persuading that supporting yet one more world championships is a good suggestion. GOMU and others will definitely be striving to current a very good case. There’s additionally a case for the IAU and GOMU to maybe be a part of forces and work collectively extra concretely towards a sustainable future for the game of ultrarunning.
Stine Rex rests on the end of the 2024 BUFF/GOMU 48-Hour World Championships. Photograph: Zoltan Schmidt and Louise Kjeldmann
Relating to whether or not the IAU will ratify Stine Rex’s document, an IAU spokesperson responded, “The 48-hour occasion at present has no IAU label, however we’re nonetheless trying on the scenario. The … EMU six-day race in Hungary has an IAU label pedigree for at the very least a decade. It’s speaking with MASZ for the time being a couple of label for subsequent yr. We collect that MASZ has tightened its necessities for races with a big worldwide element.”
We await information of the continued discussions and can replace this text when extra info turns into out there. MASZ should retroactively sanction the occasion, and the IAU might subject a label retrospectively, which it has the facility to do. Whereas historical past reveals this not often occurs, it appears a retroactive ratification could be a superb determination by the stakeholders. It’s onerous to think about that the game’s management will enable an athlete’s stellar efficiency to be the collateral harm of its failure to work collectively successfully.
The runners are the important folks in all this. They are going to at all times be keen to push their boundaries and discover new limits. One hopes that, for the runners’ sakes, future occasions won’t throw up the identical challenges that beset the 2024 BUFF/GOMU 48-Hour World Championships.
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- What are your ideas on this case?
- Do you suppose the document needs to be retroactively ratified?
- What are your concepts for a sustainable way forward for ultrarunning, particularly multi-day ultrarunning?
