Women’s participation in trail running jumps 8 per cent in six years, say ITRA statistics
- Trail running’s de facto governing body has released statistics around age, gender, number of runners and races, finishers and more
- The International Trail Running Association supports millions of trail races and allocates Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc points
The proportion of women in trail running has grown by 8 per cent, according to statistics released by the International Trail Running Association (ITRA). The sports de facto governing body has released an infographic with a host of graphs, numbers and statistics.
In 2013, just 18 per cent of runners were women but that number rose to 26 per cent in 2019. Not all races subscribe to ITRA, so this is taken from five million results, and 1.77 million runners across 25,700 races in 195 countries or autonomous regions.
Finland leads the way in gender diversity, with women making up 43 per cent of runners. That is followed by Australia (41 per cent), Argentina and Canada (39 per cent) and New Zealand (38 per cent).
Women who trail run are, on average, 39 years old and men are 40.
ITRA assigns points to every runner, saying it is an objective way to compare runners who are not racing against each other. The score is out of 1,000. Men and women are considered elite if their scores are over 825 or 700 respectively.