Change to stay the same. This is how the leaders of the Asturian mountain and athletics federations interpret the recent court ruling on the competitions to organize races. The National Court dismissed a lawsuit from six regional mountaineering federations – including the Asturian one – and agreed with the Spanish athletics federation, which will be able to organize trail running competitions. But, on the other hand, it defines trail-running as “race without elevation”, which greatly limits its field of action. In the background, according to the athletes, is the struggle to obtain licenses, one of the main ways of financing the federations. Although in Asturias, due to a kind of gentlemen’s agreement, there has been no conflict.
“It has been a Solomonic sentence. They understood that the two federations had to be satisfied”, he valued Juan Rionda, acting president of the Mountain Federation of the Principality of Asturias (Fempa), who brings historical data to the debate: “Mountain races have been in the European association for 50 years and in the Spanish federation since 2001. Until 2018 there was a agreement by which the athletics federations could organize races in the mountains with a maximum of 20 kilometers and a thousand meters of positive difference in altitude. But Raúl Chapado became president of the Spanish Federation and incorporated trail-running as an athletics modality”. As the Sports Law establishes the impossibility for a sports modality to be ascribed to more than one federation, six mountain territories filed an appeal before the National Court with the clear intention of recovering the athletes who were processing their license for athletics. In the ruling, dated December 16, the Court dismissed the petition considering that “there are differences between trail-running and mountain races, which allows them to be managed by different federations.”
But in another paragraph of the sentence, the theoretical defeat of the mountain leaders is very relativized, as the National Court considers that any race with elevation and that crowns a peak or goes towards it is a mountain race, and therefore belongs to the national or territorial mountaineering. As most mountain races in Spain, and of course in Asturias, have elevation and climb some peak, the margin for athletics narrows.
The Spanish Athletics Federation defines trail-running as “races that take place on a wide variety of terrain (including dirt roads, forest roads, and single track trails) in a natural environment in open country (such as mountains, deserts, etc.) , forests or plains) mainly off-road”. Meanwhile, the Spanish Federation of Mountain and Climbing says that mountain races are “those that take place above 2,000 meters of altitude, where the average minimum inclination is greater than 6 percent, including parts with 30 percent of inclination. The difficulty of the climb cannot exceed grade II”.
The resolution of the Court highlights that mountain races have “added risks (cracks, chimneys, climbs, precipices, ridges, rapid changes in weather…) that do not affect trail-running”. And he adds that the tests of this modality take place “in the mountain environment, but in no case are they races ‘towards the mountain’, a characteristic that is only typical of mountain races”.
Unlike other communities, Asturias has remained free from any conflict over the competition to organize this type of race during these three years. “We are totally outside of any controversy,” emphasizes Ignacio Lacarra, head of the Asturian Athletics Federation’s trail. And he adds: “The only thing we are looking for is to give our federates what they have been demanding for a long time, which is the possibility of running in the natural environment in a regulated way, just as they do in cross-country, on the track and on the road” .
The athletics district only organized two races of this modality during 2021: the Asturias Marathon Trail Championship, Oviedo-Gijón, which also included minor categories (under-16 and under-18) and the Asturias Ultra Trail Championship “Where It Walks Bear”. Lacarra highlights the spectacular increase in trail licenses, going from 40 in 2020 to 124 last year, taking into account that national licenses already include the part corresponding to trail running, which increases them by several hundred more.
For the mountaineering territory, the specific racing licenses (370) represent a minimum percentage of the 14,697 that were processed last year. One of its directors, Tensi Carmona, explains that the key is that these licenses only cover training and testing. A key factor, according to Carmona, is that, unlike other communities, the organizers of tests in Asturias do not need the authorization of the territorial ones. Only when they are interested in achieving homologation, the organizations have to pay a canon to the federations.
The Tamburiello Trail returns on April 9
After the suspension in 2020 due to the health crisis and the postponement in 2021, on April 9 the Tamburiello Trail will be held again, which takes place in the Valdés council. The trail-running test, of 10 kilometers and 550 meters of positive slope, hopes to exhaust the registration quota. The event, organized by the San Pedro Neighborhood Association of Setienes and La Granda, brings as a novelty a solidarity children’s race, in which the registration will be the symbolic contribution of a non-perishable food.
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