Kaçkar by UTMB: 2,000 Footsteps on the Mountain and the Limits of a Sporting Manifesto

Mist descended upon the Ayder valley like a giant veil. I stood at the edge of the trail, where the first trail runners descended from the Kaçkar peak, and felt the cold of the Eastern Black Sea plateau seep through my jacket. There were no roaring cheers, no packed grandstands. Only the sound of footsteps on gravel, trekking poles tapping rhythm, and the breath of two thousand people from sixty countries. That was the scene of Kaçkar by UTMB 2026 — an international trail running event gathering 2,000 athletes from 60 countries, stretching across courses from 20 km to over 100 km through the majestic Kaçkar range in Turkey's Eastern Black Sea region. Minister of Youth and Sports Osman Aşkın Bak personally started the race, ran the 20 km course, and declared that Turkey is turning sport into a tourism industry. But behind the impressive numbers and enthusiastic statements from officials lies a deeper story about how sport is being used as a tool for national brand positioning — and about the information gaps that sports media must see. Trail running has experienced a global boom over the past decade. If traditional marathons are tied to streets and stadiums, trail running brings people back to wild nature — where terrain, altitude, weather, and solitude become part of the competition. UTMB (Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc) is the dominant brand in this field, with its main event in Chamonix, France, attracting tens of thousands of runners and hundreds of thousands of spectators annually. The UTMB World Series model is clear: organize satellite events worldwide, award "Running Stones" to participants, and those who accumulate enough gain a chance to enter the Chamonix finals through a lottery. This is a sophisticated business system: selling the dream of conquering Mont-Blanc to millions of runners worldwide. Kaçkar by UTMB is a link in that system. First held in 2026, with 2026 marking its second edition, the event signals UTMB's expansion into the Eastern Black Sea region — an area of rugged mountain terrain, harsh climate, but stunning scenery. With 2,000 athletes from 60 countries, this is no longer a small local race but a significant international event. Notably, state agencies are involved. The Ministry of Youth and Sports, the Turkish Tourism Promotion and Development Agency, the Rize Governorship, and DOKA — the Eastern Black Sea Development Agency — all sit on the organizing committee. On the sponsorship side, major names such as Turkish Airlines, TOGG, Turkcell, and Maxis have poured money into the event. This is a state-corporate coalition, with goals beyond sport — economics and image. Looking at the event's structure, the first thing to recognize is that this is not a competition within the Olympic or World Athletics system. Trail running is not yet in the Olympics, and events like Kaçkar by UTMB operate on the commercial logic of the UTMB Group, not on national selection standards. Entry here is determined by lottery and Running Stones, not by performance or ranking. This means: despite 2,000 athletes present, the source provides no elite athlete names. No results, no finish times, no course records. The Minister says "ultra marathon runners are world-class athletes with fans worldwide" — but that is a rhetorical statement, not evidence of the field's quality. In sports journalism, this is an important signal. An event can be large in participation numbers without carrying weight in performance terms. Trail running differs from track athletics in that there are no official world records; performance is only meaningful relative to terrain and specific course conditions. Therefore, to assess the sporting quality of a trail event, one needs to know the course record and the depth of the elite field — and neither appears in the source. But setting performance aside, the event's structure reveals something interesting. This is a sports franchise model: UTMB sells brand rights, technical standards, and a points system to localities, in exchange for global brand presence and international participant flow. Localities provide terrain, infrastructure, sponsorship, and geographic narrative. It is a mutually beneficial exchange — but the benefit lies not in pure sport, but in brand value and tourism. Minister Osman Aşkın Bak made this clear: "Sports tourism provides significant earnings to the country." And he compared Rize to Davos — known as the site of the World Economic Forum. "We want to associate Ayder and Rize with such organizations, similar to how Davos is associated with economic forums." This is a strategic statement, not a sporting one. Turkish Airlines' sponsorship further reinforces this argument. The national carrier does not sponsor trail running out of love for mountain paths. It sponsors because it wants to bring international tourists to Turkey, and trail runners — willing to spend money to travel to a remote mountain region — are an attractive customer segment. This is tourism logic, not elite sport logic. The irony is this: while the event promotes itself as an elite sporting competition, its structure serves tourism objectives more than performance. And there is nothing wrong with that — as long as we call it by its right name. The problem begins when people use the language of competitive sport to describe a tourism event. When the Minister speaks of "world-class athletes," readers may assume this is a tournament gathering top names. But in reality, the source names no elite athlete. The only individuals mentioned as "runners" are Mr. Yusuf Özhan and Mr. Hasan Hüseyin Kul — media and organizational figures running the 20 km course as a symbolic gesture. This is a typical blind spot in modern sports journalism: scale is confused with quality. An event with 2,000 participants is described as a sporting achievement, while the true measure of elite sport — the performances of the best — is entirely absent. I recall my early days following trail events in Asia. I once visited a small race in the northern mountains, where only a few dozen runners participated. The winner was a local man running barefoot, who broke the course record with a running power I had never seen. But no one wrote about him, because he was not on Instagram, had no sponsors, and no airline flew him in. Two years later, another international event was held at the same location, with hundreds of foreign runners, branded jerseys, and a grand opening ceremony. But the winner's finish time was nearly two hours slower than the old record. This story repeats itself everywhere in the world: sport is sucked into the machinery of branding and tourism, while true talents — those born from the trail — are left behind. There is another risk rarely mentioned: dependence on public budgets. With the involvement of the Ministry of Youth and Sports, DOKA, and the provincial government, the existence of Kaçkar by UTMB is tightly bound to state budget flows. If politics change, or if budget priorities shift, the event could disappear. This is a model seen in many countries emerging as sports destinations: initial enthusiasm is funded, but true commercial sustainability is often untested. And finally, weather risk cannot be ignored. The Governor himself admitted that in the first edition, "Kaçkar was hidden by fog and rain." The Eastern Black Sea mountains are known for humid and unpredictable weather — high rainfall, dense fog, and sudden changes. For an event whose promotional value depends on beautiful images broadcast worldwide, bad weather is a direct blow to marketing objectives. And for a long-distance trail race, bad weather is also a serious safety risk. Kaçkar by UTMB is a vivid example of a larger 21st-century sports trend: sport is no longer just sport. It is a diplomatic tool, a destination marketing channel, a brand value machine. This is not necessarily bad — it can bring real economic benefits to local communities, promote sustainable tourism, and create opportunities for thousands to experience nature's wonders. But it raises questions about the role of sports journalists. When an event is framed as a sports story, we have a responsibility to distinguish scale from quality, advertising from performance. We need to ask: Who won? With what mark? What is the course record? How many events in the UTMB system are expanding, and who benefits from that expansion? In places no one notices, I find what the whole world will talk about. But sometimes, in places the whole world talks about, we need to find what has been forgotten — the people, the stories, and the truths behind the dazzling lights. The stadium is empty, but the heart of sport still beats. And at Kaçkar, amid the winds of the high plateau, I hear the applause of my own.