Na semana passada a polêmica do mercado Trail Running girou em torno de 9 organizadores norte-americanos que questionaram os trabalhos da ITRA e o pagamento das taxas para que as provas possam pontuar na associação. Como resposta a ITRA divulgou o release abaixo, que mantivemos em inglês para evitar erros de interpretação:

Response to the article published by 9 american organizers on ultrarunning.com and trailrunnermag.com

Following the article published on 27th June on ultrarunning.com and on 29th June on trailrunnermag.com, the ITRA wishes to respond.

1. It is written : “Catherine Poletti, who, along with her husband Michel, owns UTMB and ITRA”
No, Catherine and Michel Poletti don’t own ITRA nor UTMB®. The ITRA is an association and its governance is ensured by a Steering Committee and an Executive Board. Michel Poletti is the association’s current elected President. Catherine Poletti is one of the ITRA’s founder members, and does not have any decision-making power inside the association.

The UTMB® is co-organised by the LLC Autour du Mont Blanc and Association les Trailers du Mont Blanc. Catherine and Michel Poletti are co-managers of the LLC Autour du Mont-Blanc and co-directors of UTMB®.

2. It is written : “UTMB and ITRA are strictly for-profit enterprises, with revenues estimated in the millions of Euros.”
The ITRA is a non-profit association founded under Swiss law. Its financial statements have been published during the General Meeting on 11th June 2017 and have been sent to all the attendees.

For more information on ITRA, including its finances, you can consult the presentation made during the General Meeting by clicking here.

The UTMB® organization’s budget is driven by the LLC Autour du Mont-Blanc whose annual accounts are filed with the French administration.

3. It is written : “UTMB requires ultra races to pay an annual fee to ITRA to earn qualifying “points.””
No, the ITRA offers different services to runners and organizers, including a race evaluation system. These services are offered to ITRA members up-to-date with their membership, and for non-member organizers interested in using them.

Each organization decides on the necessary qualification requirements to enter its race. Each organization can choose the races that will be qualifying for its race, whether or not they are evaluated by ITRA. There is no fee payable to be a race on the UTMB® qualifying list.

4. It is written : “Kilian lacked the qualifying UTMB “points.””
The UTMB® organization has ensured that Kilian Jornet had his points. Regarding the performances of the latter and knowing the Hardrock 100 Endurance Run and its limited number of finishers (between 110 and 125), the UTMB® has chosen to add retroactively the race, on an exceptional basis, to the list of races allowing runners to qualify (6 points). This choice was approved by Dale Garland, the race director of Hardrock 100 Endurance Run. In fact, Kilian Jornet has his points to run the 2017 UTMB®.

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Following the discussions resulting from this article, the ITRA wishes to provide an explanation regarding its organization and operation in order to respond to the questions as accurately as possible.

The facts
ITRA received an email on 19th March, 2017 from UTMB® indicating that Hardrock 100 Endurance Run accepted the UTMB® proposal to be a qualifying race.

At the same time, the UTMB® proposed to the race director of Hardrock 100 Endurance Run that he be contacted by the ITRA, in order to let the latter present its organization and operation to him. The proposal was agreed.

Three days later, the ITRA contacted the Hardrock 100 Endurance Run as agreed and informed them by email about the general organization and the association’s missions. Since ITRA did not receive any answer to the last email sent, they concluded that the Hardrock 100 Endurance Run was not interested in joining the organization. The discussions stopped there and nothing else was done to follow up.

So far, the Hardrock 100 Endurance Run is not an ITRA member and has not been evaluated by ITRA.

ITRA organization
ITRA is an international non-profit association. Any positive balance of funds is fully reinvested to finance the ITRA’s development and activities.

Its members are runners, organizers, and national athletics federations. Today it counts 14 founding members, 14 institutional members, 874 organizer members, and 3198 runner members from 84 different countries.

Organizers and runners are represented by 86 national representatives elected for 2 years by the runner and organizer members of each country.

ITRA is directed by a Steering Committee elected democratically composed by 2 founding members, 8 institutional members, 8 organizer members and 4 runner members.

The day-to-day work is under the Executive Committee, composed by the president, the 4 vice-presidents, the secretary-general and the treasurer. The Executive Committee is elected by the Steering Committee. Michel Poletti is the current elected president.

All the ITRA elected members are volunteers: they do not receive any salary for their functions inside ITRA. The ITRA has 4 full-time or part-time employees.

The ITRA statutes are available here.

How is ITRA run ?
ITRA brings certain services to its members, but also offers some free services to all organizers or runners. Currently, they count 918 organizer accounts and 29,474 free runner accounts.

ITRA has set up many commissions to work on the different topics related to the sport:

The health commission
It organizes doctors and researchers in order to understand trail-running’s effects on health and to develop a health program for runners.

The security & safety commission
It offers solutions to help organizers by improving the safety measures set up in their races (The security guidelines can be downloaded for free in 6 languages on the ITRA website by clicking here).

The quality commission
It will soon offer to organizers a method to evaluate the international quality of their races.

The ranking and evaluation commission
It brings the ITRA Performance Index and the ITRA points’ calculation.
– Much works has been carried out to improve the calculation of the Performance Index and other factors could be included in the calculation soon.
– Race evaluations are requested through the organization’s account on the ITRA website. The account creation is free, the organization can decide to be a member or not. In the case of membership, the annual fees cover the evaluation requests for all the year, otherwise the price for an evaluation is 100€. Only quantifiable factors are used to evaluate races, namely: the distance and the elevation gain.

The World Championships commission
ITRA develops the technical and communication specifications and share them with the IAU and the local organizer. It works jointly with IAU and the local organizer in relation to the World Championships’ organization.

The elite athletes commission
Whenever the Steering Committee must take a strategic decision for ITRA in relation to this subject, it asks the elite athletes commission for their point of view.

For more information about ITRA, including its finances, you can consult the presentation made at the last General Assembly of ITRA, 11th June 2017 in Badia Prataglia, Italy, by clicking here.

Key information to remember

The ITRA evaluates GPS tracks of race organizers who request evaluation.
Points awarded by the ITRA to races allow runners to register on some races that require, in their race regulation, a minimum of points (such as UTMF, Lavaredo Ultra-Trail®, Madeira Island Ultra-Trail®, UTMB®, Trail Verbier Saint Bernard, Mauna to Mauna Ultra,…).

ITRA doesn’t intervene in the organizers’ choices regarding their qualifying races. This is not ITRA’s job, it is the role of the organizers only.