Ultra-Trail Harricana confirms place in Ultra-Trail World Tour
At the closing ceremony in Paris on December 12, the Ultra-Trail World Tour (UTWT) announced the details of the 2020 Tour, which once more will include the Ultra-Trail Harricana of Canada. The 125-kilometer race will again be part of the competitive family of prestigious international races such as Vibram® Hong-Kong 100, Transgrancanaria HG, Madeira Island Ultra-Trail®, Ultra-Trail Australia®, Lavaredo Ultra Trail, Western State®100-Mile Endurance Run and UTMB® Mont-Blanc (UTMB®, TDS® and CCC®).
The confirmation of this race in Quebec, the only UTWT race in Canada, underscores UTHC’s position on the world stage and its commitment to its role as a trail-running leader in Canada.
Marline Côté, executive director of the UTHC event, said, “It’s an honour to continue our relationship with the Ultra-Trail World Tour. It opens the door to communicating with an extensive network of runners from all over the world. But even more importantly, it’s a tour of races that want to work together and build synergy to develop the sport’s full potential.”
UTWT: New in 2020
The Ultra-Trail® World Tour 2019 Awards Ceremony – presented by Volvic – also saw the announcement of significant improvements for the 2020 Ultra-Trail® World Tour season which will feature an expanded, simplified and unified race calendar, involving all historical events alongside new venues in China, France, Spain, Russia and Oman.
Equally important are the changes announced to the ranking and points systems. From January 1st the existing World and Annual rankings will be unified into a single ranking based on each athlete’s best four Ultra-Trail® World Tour results over a rolling 24 month period.
Runners need to have taken part in a minimum of four Ultra-Trail® World Tour races in the last 24 months to be included, with the overall ranking recalculated from the new results from each completed event. On January 1st 2020 the single Ultra-Trail® World Tour ranking will be based on results between January 1st 2018 and December 31st 2019. The first update will follow the Vibram® Hong-Kong 100, the opening race of the 2020 season.
Also unveiled for regular participants on the Ultra-Trail® World Tour are the introduction of an e-passport (by the summer 2020), which will open the door to a number of benefits for the runners, and ‘Running Stones’ which are designed to fast-track entry to the heavily over-subscribed UTMB® Mont-Blanc races. Starting in January 2020 runners who complete Ultra-Trail® World Tour races will be awarded Running Stones (1 Running Stone per ITRA point), which can be retained and used to gain direct entry to UTMB® Mont-Blanc races, avoiding the lottery.