Months of dialogue of the deaf and false promises. Then radio silence. Before Stanislas Réchard learned, on September 11, overnight, that his Trail du Ventoux (Vaucluse), twenty years old, would find itself in competition, in the spring, with the UTMB Group, which bought the emblematic Grand Raid du Ventoux (GRV).
Initially, the UTMB, Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, is a 170-kilometer race created in 2003 in Chamonix (Haute-Savoie) by Catherine and Michel Poletti. Today, it has evolved into a group, buying or franchising competitions, to become the largest ultra-trail racing circuit in the world: 51 events called the World Series in 28 countries announced in 2025, bringing together 165,000 participants.
“The change in format and location of the GRV now makes it a race copy of ours, one month apart, 12 kilometers away. And with registrations open before our event, despite the commitment to the contrary! »protests Mr. Réchard, the boss of the Trail du Ventoux.
A year ago, the arrival of the UTMB in British Columbia, a province in western Canada, had already created controversy. Since 2016, trail runner Gary Robbins has organized the Whistler Alpine Meadows there. Approached by the leaders of the structure, he was first tempted to negotiate before refusing to go any further in the discussion. A few months later, he learned that his sponsors had fallen into the fold of the group, which he accused of having intrigued to impose its own event. Its event no longer exists, but an Ultra Trail Whistler by UTMB is planned in the region next year, the 7e circuit event in North America.
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According to numerous testimonies collected by The Worldthis way of maneuvering behind the scenes then imposing itself on the ground without much consideration for the local actors already present would be recurring. “We are grocers, they are a hypermarket. In front of them, we do not exist”laments Stanislas Réchard. In less than two years, the UTMB Group has experienced unprecedented growth: in 2021, the family SME joined forces with the triathlon giant, the American Ironman, which owns 45% of the structure’s shares, the Poletti family holding the remaining 55%.
A drying mechanism
James Elson, president of the British Trail Association, says he is very worried today. “When, in a small market like Great Britain, you have two “by UTMB” events, whose pyramid system requires riders to do at least one race on this circuit to qualify for the Chamonix final, this inevitably siphons off the participants and volunteers. »
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