An epic duel between Kilian Jornet and Mathieu Blanchard under the 20 hours of his queen race (171 km and 10,000 m of elevation gain) and a first television broadcast on the L’Equipe channel. The Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) has undoubtedly passed a milestone in popularity thanks to its 2022 edition. However, three weeks later, the world summit of trail-running suffered the wrath of Jean-Marc Peillex, the mayor of Saint-Gervais, a commune in Haute-Savoie through which the ordeal took place. In a letter sent to President Macron, the elected official castigated in particular “the catastrophic carbon footprint of the UTMB”. A bloody exit that Jean-Marc Peillex still claims, eleven months later, in full 20th anniversary of the race (from August 28 to September 3 in Chamonix).
“Behind its green dressing, the UTMB is more and more in overtourism and overcrowding in the mountains with between 30,000 and 50,000 people on the event, he criticizes. We are in the midst of delusions of grandeur, far from its acceptable dimension of the 2010s. There, the organizers have even sold themselves to the automotive world. The politician refers to the recent naming who symbolically changed this meeting to “Dacia UTMB”. This news resulted in August 14 a petition demanding the end of the UTMB-Dacia partnership, initiated by the Green runners association, and signed by more than 2,350 people, including the ultimate star of the discipline Kilian Jornet.
The UTMB “assumes” its partnership and its “naming” with Dacia
The CEO of UTMB Group Frédéric Lénart responds to this subject: “We respect the position of these runners, we listen to them and we take the subject very seriously. We had weighed the pros and cons before and we assume: this new title partnership does not seem incompatible with our values. The mobility of the future will integrate the automobile and we are a popular event, just as Dacia is a brand accessible to the greatest number of people. It does not market 2-tonne SUVs”. If Frédéric Lénart assures that this big controversy has “resulted in no defection of runners”, we can still raise the debate: to what extent can the UTMB, or even the world of trail running as a whole, be tackled for its management of the environmental issues that are so much talked about in 2023?
The most frequent criticism of the UTMB is its number of participants (around 10,000, precisely 9,947 this week for eight races), far from the three other most prestigious ultras in the world, namely the Diagonale des Fous (7,400 runners in Reunion in four events), and even more the Western States (379 trail runners in June 2023) and the Hardrock (146 starters last month) in the United States. “We often accuse the event of being too big, but it’s been fourteen years, since the creation of the TDS in 2009, that we haven’t added runners, defends Isabelle Viseux-Poletti, director of the UTMB Mont Blanc. The total number of people present at the event is therefore stabilized at around 30,000, with approximately 10,000 runners and 20,000 accompanying persons. We have been regulating our offer for many years since we have three times more requests than places available. »
“Zero plastic bottles” and a carpooling platform in 2023
On the organizational side, we mention for the corporate social responsibility (CSR) report more than 3 million euros collected in favor of 37 associations since 2014 (runners’ donations and solidarity bibs), a presence among the first signatories of the charter for major international sporting events co-constructed by the Ministry of Sports and WWF France, a transition to “zero plastic bottles” at the event this year, as well as an enhanced transport plan (nearly 500,000 euros invested, with nearly 250 cars in total) and a unique carpooling platform.
The objective is clear: to transport 100% of the runners and 100% of the companions throughout this week, in order to solve this annual puzzle: to unclog the Chamonix valley. To achieve this, wouldn’t the most viable solution be to reduce the number of runners entered in the eight races scheduled until Sunday around Mont-Blanc? “We have been able to welcome 10,000 participants so far, so why should we reduce this number because we talk more about this environmental issue today?, questions Isabelle Viseux-Poletti. I don’t know if that would be of interest. We would make people even more frustrated, while we like to please people. »
25 volunteer “environmental ambassadors” mobilized
Jean-Marc Peillex aside: “Despite the state of drought in the mountains last year, with suffering fauna and flora, the UTMB route has not been modified and 10,000 runners pass and damage these trails. This is proof that the race is incapable of adapting”. Responsible for the CSR section at the UTMB, Chloé Léger responds on this point: “What is essential is to see how we run on these trails and not the number of runners who go on them. The most important thing to limit our impact on biodiversity in the mountains is not to leave a marked trail and not to use poles in sensitive areas, as the signage reminds us”.
Once their bib has been collected, each UTMB participant listens to the instructions of the 25 volunteer “environmental ambassadors”. In case of deviation from these rules, the rider could suffer a penalty ranging from 15 minutes to 1 hour stoppage. If there is indeed a delicate point to defend for UTMB Group, which became the world’s largest trail-running circuit last year (36 events from New Zealand to the United States, via Thailand, South Africa and Brazil), it is this presence of 60% of foreign runners during the finals of the event in Chamonix.
“You need strong choices from the athlete so as not to explode his carbon footprint”
“We try to encourage runners from other continents to consider the UTMB Mont-Blanc [2.300 places sur le 171 km] like the dream of a lifetime, a race that you only come to do once”, slips Chloé Léger. At the same time, the Diagonale des Fous chose to set a quota of 350 participants from abroad, and the Hardrock only welcomed 13 privileged people from outside the USA in July… Finally, how do the athletes live with these criticisms of more and more bitter against the UTMB, in an outdoor sport where icons like Kilian Jornet and Xavier Thévenard are militants, and where Andy Symonds is giving up the 2022 Worlds in Thailand to avoid worsening his carbon footprint?
- Baptiste Chassagne (long trail French champion): “We hit the UTMB a lot, but if it doesn’t grow, it can’t fight. I try to be aware of the planes I take, but I am not going to give lessons to Asians and South Americans who are not lucky enough to be able to participate in such a big race as this near their home. “.
- Simon Gosselin (rider and coach of Rémi Bonnet): “The UTMB’s carbon footprint cannot be good given that the event attracts thousands of people and has an unparalleled international field. The UTMB has become a juggernaut with all these races bought back and despite its efforts, it needs to think about how to make the event sustainable. In trail running, we are a little ahead of environmental issues compared to other sports. But given the increasingly international calendar, strong choices are needed from the athlete so as not to explode his carbon footprint”.
- Jim Walmsley (American trail runner among the favorites of this UTMB): “The organization is aware of being observed on these environmental issues. She tries to adapt as best she can. It’s a question of perspective: when you see that thousands of cars go on the roads of the Tour du France every day for three consecutive weeks, that can put the environmental impact of a few days of UTMB into perspective, right? “.
“We don’t want to become a race dedicated to 300 elites”
Organizer of the Mont-Blanc Marathon, two months before the UTMB, Fred Comte continues: “It’s easier to hit a race than the climbs to the Aiguille du Midi, the use of the Mont-Blanc tunnel to access Italy, and all these real daily problems”. Going from 300 runners during its first cross-country in 1979 to 10,000 participants now, its event faces the same environmental dilemmas as the UTMB.
We are talking about a very narrow glacial valley which is struggling to absorb this flow, so how can our events remain digestible?, confides Fred Comte. We feel very strong pressure to accept more runners, but many signals such as traffic and parking constraints encourage us to block our gauges, and perhaps we will even lower them in the future. Afterwards, the magic of trail is to put the amateur runner on the starting line alongside a professional. We don’t want to become a race dedicated to 300 elites. »
The Templar Festival still has to convince the farmers of Larzac
Nevertheless, in a valley that is extremely touristic in summer (about 100,000 people a day), an event like the UTMB is the coup de grace for some locals attached to the protection of the mountain. But the environmental criticisms made of trail races do not only focus on the unmissable Haute-Savoie event. Even the Festival des Templiers (10,000 participants divided into 15 events) around Millau (Aveyron), the first major race of the discipline in France in 1995 and renowned for its solidarity dimension and for its fifteen years without plastic bottles, is a privileged witness. .
“We may respect 14 of the 15 points of the charter of eco-responsible commitments from the Ministry of Sports and WWF France, but we were treated to not very courteous discussions with the new generation of Larzac farmers, says its creator Gilles. Bertrand. There is a real tension around the car traffic that we generate. This sums up the problem as follows: “Events are ephemeral and rage over a short period of time, whereas the reduction of impacts requires a long period of time”. And even endless like an ultra of 171 terminals, right?