The off-road scene is booming, but has that success come at a price? Matt Walsh examines the good and the bad that has accompanied rapid growth and considers what athletics as a whole might be able to learn from this corner of the sport.

Trail running used to be a way to get away from it all. Now it’s where everyone seems to be going. Races sell out in minutes, brands build marketing calendars around mountain events, and a sport once defined by independence is learning to live with TV rights, global circuits, and prize purses. Growth has been both remarkable and destabilising, leaving many trail runners wondering what happens when a pastime becomes a commercial event – and maybe even an Olympic sport.

A perfect storm of timing and culture

Trail running’s rise was not a single event but a convergence of culture, storytelling, and timing. Participation has been slowly growing over the past decade, but surged during the pandemic as people sought open spaces and self-directed challenges. Strava data shows that, between 2022 and 2025, the number of trail runs recorded on the platform doubled.

The sport also benefits from being visually striking, an aesthetic form of endurance played out against dramatic landscapes. Over the past decade, YouTubers and filmmakers have filled social media with short, cinematic depictions of mountain races and personal challenges. Events such as The Spine, running the length of the Pennine Way, became global cultural moments through “dot-watching” on live tracking maps and daily YouTube updates.

These formats require little infrastructure yet offer compelling narratives: endurance framed as adventure. Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB) and the Golden Trail World Series (GTWS) now livestream races almost every weekend. Long-distance trail running found its narrative engine through these events, turning solitude into a shared experience.

The sport’s icons helped humanise that story. Kilian Jornet redefined the limits of endurance before tackling personal mountain projects like traversing and travelling between the United States’ 72 highest peaks in a month. Courtney Dauwalter’s humour and humility made her a beacon for the sport as she shattered course records. Jim Walmsley’s candour about repeated UTMB failures before his 2023 victory made his triumph relatable. Their openness and understatement turned them into role models, as well as being elite athletes.

Brands quickly recognised the cultural value. Trail running fused performance with identity, giving companies like Salomon, Hoka, and The North Face room to connect technical innovation with lifestyle. Nike and Adidas soon followed with dedicated trail teams. Slowly, what was once a fringe sport has become a commercial ecosystem.

A new professional class

While ultra-distance races captured public imagination, a faster, more structured version emerged. The GTWS, launched in 2018 by Salomon, brought together iconic short-distance races such as Zegama and Mont-Blanc Marathon into one professional series.

It offered consistent calendars, prize money and broadcast coverage that reframed trail running as high-speed entertainment. As GTWS founder Greg Vollet once told me: “The athletes are the actors, and the course is the stage.”

The GTWS helped professionalise the sport but also deepened its fragmentation.

The UTMB World Series, the Skyrunner World Series and the World Trail Majors all now run concurrently, with different ranking systems. Athletes juggle commercial circuits, national representation and sponsorship obligations, often in overlapping seasons. For fans, following results across conflicting systems is a full-time job.

This patchwork reflects a sport still defining itself. Each series aims to shape trail running in its own image, whether through governance or ownership. Coordination remains limited and calendars clash, making what looks like abundance from afar feel like congestion for athletes and organisers trying to plan a season.

Another pertinent consequence of this malaise for athletes is doping. Out-of-competition testing remains inconsistent, since many trail races operate outside World Athletics’ standard pool. The result is uneven regulation across continents and circuits. Sponsors and athletes increasingly call for unified protocols, though implementing them would require a shared governing structure that does not yet exist.

Other inconsistencies persist. Race distances, elevation gain and qualifying systems vary widely. Some organisers emphasise participation and community, others pure performance. That diversity gives trail running its character, but it also complicates comparisons and undermines efforts to create a coherent professional tier.

The UTMB debate

No event captures both the success and the strain of this expansion better than the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc. What began as a local alpine race in 2003 has become a global circuit of 56 races managed in partnership with the Ironman Group, who acquired 45% of UTMB in 2021. The UTMB World Series has undoubtedly raised production quality, increased prize money, and connected dozens of events under one banner.

Yet, the model has also been divisive. Independent race directors fear that consolidation concentrates sponsorship and visibility, making it harder for smaller races to survive. Anecdotally, UK race directors have told me recently that race bookings are harder to come by and are filling up later, as UTMB captures most new and seasoned runners entry fees. Many athletes appreciate the clarity and opportunity UTMB provides, while others view it as an erosion of the sport’s autonomy.

The split has become symbolic of a broader question: can trail running scale without losing its soul?

From independence to Institutions

The rapid rise of professionalism has also accelerated the sport into Olympic contention. Take the creation of the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships, an event organised by World Athletics and the sport’s three governing bodies: ITRA (International Trail Running Association), WMRA (World Mountain Running Association), and IAU (International Association of Ultrarunners).

The race has brought with it national teams, federation funding and official medals across short and long distances, signalling a new level of recognition and professionalism.

Yet it has also imported the formalities of Olympic-style sport into a space once prized for its informality.

For some, this represents progress, for others it marks the start of a bureaucratic era that risks flattening the sport’s local distinctiveness. Trail running’s essence has always been its variability. Each landscape, each race and each community tells a different story. Turning that into a single regulated product is a delicate task.

Cultural balancing act

Growth has brought prosperity and exposure, though it has also made the sport more self-aware. When every major race is live-streamed and monetised, spontaneity becomes scarce. Athletes who once saw trail running as an escape now navigate sponsorship obligations, media appearances and packed calendars.

Even so, the culture remains resilient. Smaller local races continue to thrive, often selling out faster than the global circuits. Volunteers sustain much of the infrastructure. And the sport’s diversity of distance and terrain continues to produce innovation, from vertical kilometres to multi-day stage races. It’s fair to say expansion has not erased the grassroots foundation, but it constantly tests it.

What the rest of running can learn

For all the chaos around its growth, trail running has done something the rest of athletics has struggled to achieve: it has made running feel alive again.

While road and track are still defined by predictable formats, trail running has created a product that looks different every weekend. Its diversity is its strength. Races vary in length, terrain and elevation, allowing both elite and amateur runners to find something that feels unique. That variability has proven far more engaging than the standardised world of road running, where every event must conform to IAAF-measured precision.

Trail running also solved a problem that mainstream running has yet to crack: how to tell stories that travel. Coverage of elite marathons often reduces to split times and finishing order. In contrast, trail running thrives on narrative. Filmmakers like Billy Yang and race organisers like the GTWS built formats designed for storytelling – short, emotional, and deeply visual. Every course has a personality; every finish looks different.

Governance is another point of contrast. World Athletics and the major marathons have struggled to balance commercial interests with athlete representation. Trail running, for all its fragmentation, operates more like an open-source movement. Independent races, athlete-run media and brand-driven circuits coexist, creating a competitive marketplace of ideas. The result is untidy but dynamic.

Even its commercial model carries lessons. The UTMB’s rise shows that sponsorship in running does not have to rely solely on broadcast rights or federation deals. Instead, it can be built around owned events, direct community engagement and content ecosystems that generate value far beyond race weekend. For a sport like road running, which often depends on municipal funding and one-off title sponsors, this approach offers a blueprint for resilience.

Perhaps most importantly, trail running has managed to make meaning part of its identity. Environmental stewardship, exploration and community are baked into how events position themselves. It is a sport that sells purpose as much as performance. Track and road running, still tethered to the language of times and medals, could benefit from a similar reframing, one that connects athletic excellence with cultural relevance.

Trail running is far from perfect: it faces governance gaps, inconsistent anti-doping enforcement, and the tension between authenticity and scale. But its success demonstrates that growth in running does not have to come from chasing speed records or stadium crowds. It can come from building a story people want to belong to.

Read more from Matt Walsh at Trailmix, a newsletter that covers the business and media of trail running here.