Have Kylian, Jornet and Zach Miller just hastened the death of UTMB? Let's find out. Last week an email began dropping in the inboxes of some of the world's top ultra-runners and it wasn't a happy new year animated gift. It was and is a cool to action. Many of you will have already seen this Strava activity title posted by Jim Warnsley towards the end of last year. This email from Kylian and Zach takes things one step further. It's a direct plea to the elites of the ultra-running world to ditch UTMB in August and come together to run a different race. Now some of you may be asking why? And to you I would say... Oh have you not heard? It was my understanding that everyone had heard. In truth this all started a few years ago with the UTMB points system. The UTMB event itself had grown so big that a lottery and points system was put in place to manage the situation. Rulers could take part in non-UTMB events which had signed up and paid a fee in order to be able to offer UTMB points to their participants. This encouraged more runners to sign up for races offering UTMB points. More runners taking part in more local events, more money for those local events, more publicity for UTMB. It seemed like a win-win situation all round until some people started to suggest that runners were only signing up to races than were offering UTMB points thereby harming races that hadn't signed up to the scheme. It was the first sign that UTMB were beginning to dominate the market. But then came the UTMB World Series. Points were dropped in favour of stones and UTMB embarked on a pretty aggressive strategy of buying up existing races all over the world or creating their own from scratch. This came to a head very recently with the whole Gary Robbins Whistler controversy. If you're not up to speed with that, you can click that link up there which will take you into the whole horrendous muddy cesspit. Essentially, UTMB were accused of railroading Gary Robbins Whistler Alpine Meadows event out of town in order to create their own very similar event at the same time of year in the same location. Now, whilst the nitty gritty details of that debacle remain unclear, many people don't actually blame UTMB at all for it and some people feel Gary Robbins shot himself in the foot somewhat. It remains a particularly unsavory incident and one which has not gone down well at all in the trail and ultra-running community. It prompted a backlash against UTMB with many calling for a boycott. UTMB themselves issued an open letter trying to explain themselves and talked to various media outlets this channel included to try and get across their side of the story. However, this is just one incident which went viral, not long after. Well-known runner and commentator, Corrine Malcolm, was fired by UTMB from her co-anchor job at UTMB Live for being so-called too outspoken about UTMB's aggressive monopolisation policy. This certainly upset a lot of people, but then we have the green runners led by environmentalist and one-time fifth place finisher at UTMB, friend of the channel Damian Hall. They've been at the forefront of growing calls for UTMB by a number of people to ditch their headline sponsor, Dashia. Dashia, of course, accompanied well-known for making their revenue from particularly non-environmentally friendly products. Interestingly, Kylian had been registered to run UTMB in 2023, but not long after UTMB announced Dachia as their headline sponsor, Kylian pulled out of the race, citing injury as the reason. Your guess is as good as mine. Although it is worth pointing out that Dashia had been a sponsor of UTMB long before that, here's UTMB on a banner in my 2022 race video. Nobody mentioned anything back then, and Kylian won UTMB that year. On top of all this, also in the past few months, we've seen the announcement of the brand new World Trail Majors series. It sets up as a direct response to the path that Trail and Ultra Running has been taking in the past few years. And whilst not directly mentioning UTMB by name, it is certainly an attempt to redress the balance somewhat. So what exactly did Kylian and Zach have to say in their email? Well, here it is. Just before we do that, if you are liking, enjoying, finding the video useful or interesting, then please do consider subscribing to the channel. Hit the like button as well on this video if you'd be so kind. Thank you. Okay, on we go, let me highlight a few details for you. We are writing to see if you might be interested in committing to racing each other at a race other than UTMB this year. They do acknowledge that UTMB has truly become the main event of the year and has really helped put our sport on the map. But then rather than going into detail about every single gripe they have with UTMB, they simply say, we feel they are not managing themselves or their events in a way that has the best interests of the sport and its people in mind. Then they go on, we want them to ask not what we can do to benefit ourselves but also what can we do to benefit the sport of trail running as a whole? The answer, they say, is for elite athletes to use their influence. An absence of the top 15 ranked male and female athletes from the UTMB start line would speak volumes. And they say they already have an alternative race in mind. Now, I don't want to speculate too much about what Killian and Zach have in mind but could it possibly be one of the world trail majors? Perhaps the Quebec Trail or the South Africa Cape Town Ultra Trail? The email finishes by saying this. The idea here is to find a way to apply some pressure to the UTMB Ironman organisation so that we can affect positive change. It would be great if we can one day go to UTMB and feel good about it. So what do we make of all that? Is this the end of UTMB? Will we see the top elite athletes all disappear off and race in a different event this summer? Well, I think it's unlikely. I certainly know one or two elites who will definitely be looking for the win at UTMB this year. Plus, elite athletes can't just do what they want. There are sponsors to consider. Sponsors who pay for their lifestyle, who pay for them to be full-time ultra runners. Sponsors definitely have a say in what races an elite athlete does each season. So I don't think there will be a mass exodus from the UTMB start line this year. And there are still, of course, plenty of supporters of the race. Many of whom feel this is all posturing. And many say this is an unwarranted campaign of hate against UTMB and the Ironman group. I have to say I'm on the fence and have been for some time. I've no problem with big business. I've no problem with businesses expanding and growing and making money. And I don't really think UTMB is a threat to local grass roots running. There will always be independent companies. There will always be local grass roots, trail and ultra races. And I will be on the start of those races as much as I will be on the start line of OCC this year. But at the same time, I do feel sometimes that UTMB thinks it can simply do what it likes a lot of the time, with scant regard for the trail running community or other businesses in that space. I do think UTMB needs to be more transparent and they need to be more considerate champions of the sport and their place within it. If not, they may find those discontented voices growing ever louder. And you know, nothing lasts forever, not even UTMB. Oh well, all things come to an end.