The Trail Running Awards by Mile & Stone
The Trail Running Awards by Mile & Stone
On Wednesday, December 11, the first edition of the Trail Running Awards organized by Mile & Stone in Annecy, a meeting place for outdoor enthusiasts. What is Mile & Stone? It is a newsletter covering trail-running topics, the market, job opportunities, and more; the Trail Business Club Podcast; Mile & Stone Connect; and now the Trail Running Awards, held at the end of the year.
What are the Trail Running Awards?
The Trail Running Awards by Mile & Stone aim to celebrate excellence and innovation in trail running. The event seeks to celebrate and highlight the contributions of athletes, companies, teams, and initiatives that made their mark in 2024. The event is held at the end of each year to mark and celebrate the end of the trail-running year. The Impérial Palace welcomed nearly 200 people for its first edition. Frédéric Bousseau and Hillary Gerardi (for the English translation) hosted this wonderful evening.
Our correspondent in France, Marine, was present and gives us an overview of this first edition.
Several categories were announced:
Trail Athlete of the Year (Women)
🏃 Trail Athlete of the Year (Men)
🎽 Team of the Year
📢 Communication Campaign of the Year
👟 Product of the Year
⚙️Service of the Year
🎒 Start-up of the Year
🌱 Environmental Initiative of the Year
🎗 Social Initiative of the Year
The jury, made up of the members below, all experts in various fields related to trail running, decides which nominees to reward.
🎒 To kick things off, it is Enduraw, Joseph Mestrallet’s start-up, which won the Start-up of the Year award. Joseph offers a service for elite athletes. He optimizes athletes’ performance using data. He puts mathematics to work for trail running.
🌱 The Environmental Initiative was won by Mont Blanc Marathon and the VVX (Volvic Volcanique Expérience). The jury was unable to decide between the two.
The organizers’ assessment of Mont Blanc Marathon the decision was simple: most of the CO² emissions come from runners traveling to the race. This year, they therefore decided to reserve 40% of the event’s bibs for participants arriving by trail (upon presentation of proof).
As for the VVX, its eco-logical program, which has been in place for 15 years, won over the jury.
🎗 TheAtlas Quest, organized by Cyril Sismondini and his team, was named Social Initiative of the Year. After the 2023 earthquake, Cyril and all his volunteers provided as much help as possible to the residents of this devastated region. TheAtlas Quest is a magnificent trail race to discover for its landscapes as well as its human side. The locals are very welcoming and happy to see that trail running can bring people to their area.
📢 The Skyrace des Matheysins wins the award for Best Communication Campaign for its live broadcast, created in 2020 and still running today, with Fred Bousseau as presenter.
⚙️ The Service of the Year award goes to Tibi Live, an innovative solution for race organizers as well as runners’ families. These are GPS beacons that provide live tracking and safety for runners during events.
👟 The Product of the Year award goes to Wise with their Sherpa pack . Guillaume Boccas and Axelle Nardoux are the founders of the brand, which now has around fifteen people working to develop it. The idea for this pack began to take shape during the 2023 Festival des Templiers. It started with a sports bra, then the idea evolved, and more than 12 pack tests were carried out to achieve this result!
To finish, on the sporting side:
🎽 Salomon was named Team of the Year; Vincent Viet and Camille Bryas were there to represent the team.
Katie Schide from The North Face, the female athlete of the year, and Elhousine Elazzaoui from NNormal, the male athlete of the year. Neither could attend the evening, but we thank the team for their nomination.
A wonderful evening organized by Mile & Stone, and we will be there again in 2025 with perhaps a great surprise!