Two Thousand Pairs of Shoes Through the Kaçkar Fog: When a Race Publishes No Times

Early one August morning on the Ayder plateau in Rize province, northeastern Türkiye, Minister of Youth and Sports Osman Aşkın Bak raised his arm and sounded the starting horn. Two thousand runners from sixty countries poured down the trails of the Kaçkar range, whose highest peak reaches nearly four thousand metres and whose valleys are typically wrapped in cloud until noon.

This was the second edition of Kaçkar by UTMB. A race inside the UTMB World Series system. A figure of two thousand runners, a figure of sixty countries, a race ranked inside the largest organisation in world trail running. State media covered it thoroughly: the minister, the governor, race director Johan Essl, sponsors Turkish Airlines, TOGG, Turkcell and Maxis.

But if you open any results page to find who won, who came second, the winners' finishing times, the course record, or even the full menu of distances, you will find nothing. Not one line. Not one number. Not one elite athlete named.

People saw a race; I saw a tourism poster dressed in sports clothes.

I am old now, and seven years of making a women's sports podcast in Saigon have not been enough to teach me that in many places sport is staged to sell an image rather than to produce results. But they have taught me how to read a sports article without being fooled by its numbers.

The pitch taught me that there are lessons that are never refused.

Context: What UTMB is, and why it exists in Rize

To understand what is happening in Ayder, you have to go back to Chamonix, France. UTMB stands for Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, the most prestigious trail-running event on earth, founded in 2026 as a loop around the Mont-Blanc massif through France, Italy and Switzerland. It has no world record in the athletics sense. None.

That sounds odd to anyone raised on track athletics. The 100 metres has a world record; the marathon has a world record; trail running does not, because every course has different gradients, altitude, terrain and weather. No two trail races are alike. So prestige in trail running is measured in victories at named races, not in an absolute time.

Over more than twenty years, UTMB Group has turned a single race in Chamonix into a global system called the UTMB World Series, with events across Europe, North America, Asia and Oceania. A local race that wants to join must meet UTMB's technical, safety and branding standards. In exchange it carries the by UTMB label and can award Running Stones, a currency used as lottery weight for entry to the Chamonix finals.

So when Kaçkar by UTMB stages its second edition, it is not a spontaneous local trail race. It is a franchise node in UTMB's global supply chain. Runners do not come here to break records. They come to collect Running Stones, to touch the Chamonix brand from a distance, and for a significant share of those two thousand people, to run through a landscape European photographers rank among the most beautiful in the Black Sea region.

The Turkish state came for a different reason. In his opening remarks, Minister Osman Aşkın Bak said clearly that Türkiye wants Ayder and Rize associated with organisations of this calibre, just as Davos is associated with economic forums. He used the word Davos. That is not an offhand phrase. It is a strategic statement about place branding.

I sat in Tokyo in 2026 during the Olympics and listened to Christine Sinclair, Canada's captain, forty years old, scoring at a fifth consecutive Games while weeping because the Canadian women's team received one-eighth of the men's budget. That story taught me something: the first number you see in sport is not the most important one. The most important number is the one that is hidden.

At Kaçkar, the numbers given are two thousand runners and sixty countries. The numbers withheld are money, time, placing, and most importantly the names of the fastest people.

Core: Reading the structure of a politicised sports event

I have spent forty-seven years watching sport, but only when running became an industry did I understand that there are two kinds of race. The first exists to find the fastest runner. The second exists to produce an image. Kaçkar by UTMB is the second kind, and there is nothing wrong with that as long as the reader knows what they are reading.

Look at the organisational structure. At the top is the Ministry of Youth and Sports. Next the Türkiye Tourism Promotion and Development Agency. Next the Governor of Rize. Next DOKA, the Eastern Black Sea Development Agency, a regional public financing body. Next four headline sponsors: Turkish Airlines, TOGG, the national electric-vehicle maker, Turkcell, the largest telecoms operator, and Maxis.

This is not the structure of a local race. It is the structure of a national promotional campaign, with the sports ministry presiding, national corporations alongside, and regional development agencies funding infrastructure. The trail event is the instrument.

What interests me is the financial structure. When a race is co-funded by a ministry, a regional development agency, a province and major state-linked companies, organising costs do not have to be recovered through entry fees. Two thousand runners paying perhaps tens to just over a hundred euros each amounts to a few hundred thousand euros. That does not fund a multi-day mountain ultra with hundreds of staff, medical cover, rescue teams and logistics. The shortfall comes from public money, and it never has to turn a direct profit. It earns indirectly through image, broadcast, inbound flights and photographs spreading online.

In football I have seen this model many times: a small city buys a big club, not to win, but so the city's name appears in international headlines. This is the same logic, transposed to trail running.

Now look at what the article does not say.

First, no times. In a race of two thousand runners across sixty countries, the winner's finishing time is the most basic possible information. Its absence is not an editing slip. It is absent because the article was not written to report competitive performance.

Second, no distance menu. The report mentions a twenty-kilometre course only indirectly, through two Anadolu Agency and AASK figures, Yusuf Özhan and Hasan Hüseyin Kul, running that distance. UTMB World Series events typically offer three to five distances, sometimes reaching one hundred kilometres or more. Mentioning one and omitting the rest means we know nothing about the event's technical difficulty.

Third, no course profile. The Kaçkar range reaches nearly four thousand metres and the Ayder plateau sits around 1,300 metres above sea level. That is public information, but the report does not say how long the course is, how much ascent it carries, or which peaks it crosses. In trail running, total vertical gain, not linear distance, determines true difficulty.

Fourth, no elite names. Minister Bak says ultra runners are world-class athletes with global followings. That is true at the general level. It is not information. It does not say who came to Kaçkar. It only says such people exist somewhere.

Together these four gaps form a clear picture. This is an article about a trail event written by people interested in tourism and branding, not in competition.

And if you think this is the first time I have met the phenomenon, you are wrong. I met it in Vietnam. In women's football I have read hundreds of pieces praising spirit, effort and dedication, with not one line on wages, bonuses, training volume, physical indices or tactical analysis. Why? Because writing about spirit is safe, and writing about money is dangerous. Same mechanism, whether in Türkiye or Vietnam.

Contrarian angle: Sports tourism can harm the very sport it promotes

Now I want to reach the point I consider most important, and the one most analyses skip: an event designed as a tourism lever can quietly weaken the very sport it claims to serve.

The mechanism is this. When money comes from public sources and from global sponsors more interested in image than results, the success criteria shift. Success is measured in views, articles, shareable photographs, hotel nights. It is no longer measured in course quality, in the depth of the elite field, in the development of the next generation.

In the short term this looks excellent. You can photograph beautiful cloud on the Kaçkar peaks, film a minister starting a race, publish stories about two thousand people running through ancient Black Sea forest. I have seen those photographs. They are genuinely beautiful. And I understand why state media want to distribute them.

In the long term there is a price. Without results, start lists or split analysis, Turkish trail running cannot build a generation capable of reaching Chamonix through performance. There will be people who come to Kaçkar for photographs, not to compete. There will be one beautiful race, but not a national trail scene.

Consider New Zealand hosting the Tarawera Ultramarathon inside the UTMB system. Full results, course records, elite start lists, per-distance vertical profiles. Japan's trail races publish the same. Those are mature trail nations. Kaçkar is in its second edition, still in brand-building, but the total absence of competitive data in official channels is a notable signal.

The second blind spot is subtler. This kind of event manufactures a sense of progress. Reading the coverage, one might believe Türkiye is becoming a trail power. In reality Türkiye is becoming a destination on UTMB's running-tourism map. Those are different things. One is sporting strength; the other brand strength. Confusing them is the most common error of journalists and audiences alike.

People see a match; I see destinies passing the ball. Here I see no destinies at all, because none are told. All that is told is the existence of an event.

The biggest operational risk is not human

Analysing a mountain trail event in the Black Sea region, one variable no organiser controls: weather. And in this report the local authority admits it.

The Governor of Rize recalls that in the first edition, fog and rain hid the Kaçkar range. That detail sits near the end like a small anecdote, but I think it is the most important information in the whole article. It establishes a precedent of documented climate risk, at this very race, at this very location.

For an event whose value is defined by imagery and media, fog and rain are not merely a safety matter. They are an economic one. Bad weather means ugly photographs, devalued broadcast, an under-illustrated campaign. A systemic risk, not a technical hiccup.

The second risk is public-budget dependence. With four of the key actors being state entities, the race's survival depends on annual allocations. If policy priorities shift, if the economy tightens, if an election changes direction, the race can stop. An event funded seventy per cent by public money is not a commercial event. It is a policy project in sports clothing.

The third risk is the gap between claim and evidence. When a minister says ultra runners are world-class athletes, the statement is true but vague. A reader may infer that world-class athletes were present in Kaçkar. The article names none to confirm or deny it.

I once had a piece rejected in July 2026. As the newsroom obsessed over the World Cup in Russia, I wrote about the U20 Women's World Cup final between Japan and Spain, about the high press covering eighteen point seven kilometres per match. The editor cut it as off-topic. I published on my own page, and Vietnam women's head coach Mai Đức Chung shared it. One million views in seventy-two hours.

Truth does not need permission. It needs a reader attentive enough to notice it is there.

What is actually worth tracking

If I were young and still working at forty, I would put three questions to the Kaçkar by UTMB organisers, and I would print all three answers whatever they were.

One: who won the longest distance, in what time, and what is the current course record? The answer would turn an event into data.

Two: how many distances are offered, how long is each, what is the total vertical gain, and how are Running Stones allocated? The answer would let observers judge technical quality.

Three: of two thousand runners, how many came from Türkiye, how many from established trail nations? The answer would show whether Kaçkar attracts elites or tourists in running kit.

These questions are not meant to diminish the event. They are the only way to know what it means for the sport. A race cannot mature without publishing results and accepting judgement by them.

I think of a young women's footballer in Hanoi in 2026, during lockdown, baking one hundred loaves of bread to fund her passion. She video-called me and laughed. That laugh taught me that sport is not medals, but a chain of small decisions made despite circumstance. A race is the same. It is not a starting horn and a finish banner. It is the sum of thousands of small decisions.

No dataset records those. And so a race that publishes no results is no longer fully a sport. It is an organised trip.

I am not saying that trip is bad. I am saying that if I were my own young sports reader, I would want to know who ran fastest, and how fast.

Looking further: Türkiye and the problem of sporting identity

One small detail deserves elevation. The report notes President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's presence in the region, ruling-party MPs, the national women's volleyball team's 2026 successes, and the 2027 European Games in Istanbul.

Placed together, these are not coincidences. They are a chain of sporting events arranged to build a national image across a decade. Women's volleyball is sporting achievement. The 2027 European Games is event infrastructure. Kaçkar by UTMB is local destination marketing. Each has a role, all pointing at one goal: positioning Türkiye as a country capable of staging international sport.

From that angle Kaçkar is no isolated event. It is a rehearsal. It is a stepping stone toward Istanbul 2027. A rational strategy, and one many nations have followed, from Qatar's World Cup to Singapore's tennis and motor racing.

Still, one point must be stressed: a mature sporting nation is not built by hosting events. It is built by producing athletes. And producing trail athletes needs public trails, qualified coaches, a national competition system, and numbers. Many numbers. Without numbers you cannot tell whether you are progressing or standing still.

I am old. Seven years ago I sat in a Saigon studio, weeping as the red light went off, listening to Huỳnh Như describe selling lottery tickets as a child to buy boots. The episode drew ten thousand listens and fifty-seven comments in its first week. For men's football that is small. For me it opened a world in which everything I had written became meaningless. What did I learn? That a small number, in the right place, is worth more than a large number in the wrong one.

Two thousand runners and sixty countries is a large number. It belongs if we are talking about tourism. It does not if we are talking about sport.

Takeaway

After finishing any sports article I ask one question: what most important thing was left out? At Kaçkar by UTMB the answer is everything measurable about competitive performance. It was left out not by oversight but because the event was not positioned to measure performance.

So when a country uses trail running to build a destination brand, is that progress for the sport, or a different direction from its spirit? And if you are a young Vietnamese runner dreaming of Chamonix, what should you learn from events like Kaçkar: how to run, or how to read a results sheet that was never published?

My answer is both, and I leave the question open, as I have for forty-seven years. But I believe one thing: a sport that will not yet publish its own results is still learning to believe in itself.

The pitch taught me that there are lessons that are never refused. And the greatest lesson here is this: sometimes the silence of a number is itself information, and it is louder than any statement.