The World Mountain and Trail Running Championships are set to take place in Innsbruck-Stubai from June 6 to 10. As part of the event, World Mountain Running Champions will be crowned for the 37th time since the inception of mountain running championships, which have a rather checkered and interesting history, having been shaped, amongst others, by several Austrian athletes – men, but even more so, women.
Let’s take a step back in time: The year is 1985; the World Mountain Running Association (WMRA) has been founded and it stages its first World Championships in St. Vigil in South Tyrol, titled “World Mountain Running Trophy”. The name would remain the same until 2008, and the event would only be given World Championship status in 2009 by the World Athletics, which was known as the IAAF back then.
While the first competition, held on September 23, 1985, only saw Europeans competing, four runners from Morocco and one contestant from Algeria signed up to participate only a year later. Alfonso Vallicella from Italy and Olivia Grüner from Germany were the first ever winners, while Helmut Stuhlpfarrer from Austria, who today leads a very secluded life in Styria, came second – in the first as well as the two following years.
Since we mentioned Styria: Painter and comedian Alf Poier, hailing from this region, used to be a very talented mountain runner in his youth; in 1988, he competed in the short distance contest in Keswick, northern England (which was held annually until 1992) and came 21st in a field of 50.
After Florian Stern from Stubai won a bronze medal in 1990, 1992 was a year of real highlights for team Austria. In Susa, in the Italian region of Piedmont, Helmut Schmuck won the men’s race, while Gudrun Pflüger won the women’s race and Sabine Stelzmüller came third. It was the first year of a series that would come to be known as the “Pflüger” series: The following year, the athlete, also from Styria, took home silver, followed by which she came first for three consecutive years. Regarding the number of victories, she was only surpassed by Andrea Mayr, another Austrian, physician by trade and long distance runner out of passion, who took home gold six times and silver two times.
An Mayrs Erfolgsliste sieht man eine weitere Eigenheit der Berglauf-Weltmeisterschaften. Ihre Goldmedaillen holte sie ausnahmslos in geraden Jahren von 2006 bis 2016. Denn nach einem ewigen Streit darüber, ob der Lauf nur bergauf oder bergauf und bergab gehen sollte, einigte man sich auf den Kompromiss, in geraden Jahren nur bergauf zu laufen, in ungeraden dafür führt die Strecke vom Tal auf den Berg und wieder ins Tal.
Jonathan Wyatt is Mayr’s counterpart amongst the men. Between 1998 and 2008, the athlete from New Zealand won six times in total, with one of his victories being the one at the 2002 World Championships in Innsbruck – which so far was the last time they were held on Austrian ground. The Austrian men on the other hand have been hungry for a medal for a long time now; after Helmut Schmuck’s bronze in 1996 there were only two more medals, with Hans Kogler taking home a silver medal in 2000 and Florian Heinzle winning a silver medal in 2003.
Die letzte einschneidende Neuerung erfolgte dann mit der kombinierten Austragung von Berglauf und Trailrunning-Weltmeisterschaften. 2021 mussten sie in Thailand noch aufgrund der Corona-Pandemie abgesagt werden, von 4. bis 6. November 2022 konnte die Premiere aber über die Bühne gehen. Maßgeblich daran mitgearbeitet hat im Vorfeld auch der damalige Präsident des Berglauf-Weltverbands WMRA – und das war niemand Geringerer als Jonathan Wyatt.
