How are UTMB® Scores Evolving and why?
For many trail races, runners receive points based on their performance. There are two main scoring systems: the International Trail Running Association (ITRA) Performance Index and the UTMB® Index. In recent years, the importance of these indices and of the associated race-specific scores has grown as they become essential for elite runners to qualify for events and determine their global ranking. Extracting all the results from the UTMB® database since 2009, we had a look at the trends.
How are UTMB® and ITRA indices calculated, what are the key features of the UTMB® Index and scores, and how have the latter been evolving? Here’s what we found out.
ETT athlete Kris Jones winning the 2024 Kullamannen by UTMB® Seventh Seal 50k race
What are the ITRA and UTMB® Indices?
The ITRA Performance Index was launched in 2013 as a way to assess and compare performances by trail runners globally via a standardised metric. The points (both for the index and the individual race scores) are capped at 1000, with a higher score indicating a superior level of performance.
In 2021, the UTMB® launched their own independent index, which provides a very similar system for ranking runners, including a theoretical maximum score and personal ranking index of 1000 points. For the purposes of this article, we focus on the UTMB® Index and scores, as they are needed to apply for the UTMB® finals and scores at individual UTMB World Series/Majors are now used to provide direct access to OCC, CCC or UTMB for elite runners.
ETT athlete Chelsea Creak at the finish of the 2024 Chianti Ultra Trail by UTMB® - Marathon Trail race
The UTMB® Index
As long as a trail race is registered with the UTMB®, athletes who finish it will receive points based on their performance (a score). These points are then used to determine an overall Index for each runner. The scoring system evaluates a runner's performance relative to other participants in the same race, accounting for the difficulty of the race and the times of top-performing athletes. How well an athlete performs and the score given is evaluated based on the position of the runner in the race, considering their time gap from the leaders.
Factors, including the amount of climbing and descending and the race distance, are used in the calculations by identifying races already completed by runners competing in the race that is being scored. These existing races are the foundation of the calculation to establish a UTMB® score for the current race being looked at.
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To clarify: The UTMB® score you receive for each individual race completed is not the same thing as your UTMB® Index. The index is calculated taking your individual race scores into account. When you read about scores, they are indications of where a runner has finished in a particular race only. But it is the Index that is then used to determine their global ranking.
Features of the UTMB® Index
Categorisation by Distance: In addition to the overall index, runners also receive a distance-specific index divided into four categories:
20K: Races approximately 20 kilometres in length
50K: Races around 50 kilometres
100K: Races around 100 kilometres
100M: Races approximately 100 miles (161 kilometres)
It is worth highlight that the race distances do not need to be exact. For example, at the Chianti Ultra Trail by UTMB races, the 100k category race is 73km, whilst the 100m category race is closer to 100k (at 120km distance).
Calculation Method: A runner's UTMB® Index in each category is calculated based on the weighted average of their top five race performances within that category over the past 36 months. So, the scores from your five best races in the past 3 years are used to calculate your overall index. To maintain a valid UTMB® Index, a runner must have completed at least one race in the relevant category within the last 24 months.
How the individual race scores are calculated has caused a lot of discussion, with runners frequently running faster race times than in previous years and receiving lower scores than their counterparts had obtained in past editions. Part of the rationale for this is that the scoring system is meant to account for the weather and other factors that may cause a race to be fast or slow. Still, given the theoretical highest score is capped at 1000 points, this is also likely a factor.
Extracting all the results from the UTMB® database, we reviewed over 6 million race results to identify some interesting trends.
Below we discuss some of them.
Most popular race distance by age and gender
Looking at all the race results between 2009 and October 2024, this is a visual representation of the number of results for male and female athletes in each category, split by age groups.
We can clearly see that there are significantly more results for male runners than female runners across all categories, and that the number of races completed decreases with age. It is important to highlight that the first age bracket of 20 – 34 years old does cover a lot more years than the others, so it is not surprising that this has the most races.
Female runners tend to favour the 20km and 50km race distances, whilst the most popular race distances for men is the 50km. The popularity of the 100-mile distance peaks at 40-44 years old.
Performance by Race Distance and Age
Looking at performance, taking the average score values for each race distance category and age grouping, we can see that there is a steady downward trend for female runners linked with age. Interestingly, women perform best, according to the calculation of the scores, in the 100-mile distance across each age group.
On the male side, there is a similar pattern with reducing scores by age.
On average, male runners receive higher scores than female runners and there is less of a spread of score values across distance categories by age when we compare men’s and women’s values.
The biggest variance in scores is noticeable in the 20km category, then this reduces as race distance increases.
Generally, the average score value for men is around 70 points higher for the 20km distance, while in the 50km distance, they receive 55 points more than women on average.
Over the longer distances, this difference is reduced. There was only one female athlete that had a race finish in the 75-79 age group, and she achieved a score 4 points higher than the average for her male counterparts.
Have UTMB® Scores Been Decreasing?
Looking at the data over time from 2011 until 2024, we can see some interesting patterns emerging, and certainly a downward trend in average scores since 2021/2022.
Looking first at the 20 to 34 female age group, the average scores generally peaked around 2021 or 2022, depending on race distances, before dropping over the past two years. Since 2022, the 20km category has dropped on average 26 points, the 50km category 21 points, the 100km category 20 points and the 100m category 10 points.
On the male side, there is a similar pattern for the average scores, with them generally peaking around 2021/22. In races taking place since 2022, the 20km category has dropped by 33 points, the 50km has dropped by 20 points, 100km category by 20 points and 100m category by 16 points.
The downward trend in scores isn’t visible just in this age category. On the female side, comparing 2022 and 2024, we can see the average scores decreasing across age and race distance category:
The biggest drop has been in the 20km race distances, over 25 points different on average, whilst in the 50km, scores have dropped by over 10 points since 2022. The 100km and 100m race results and scores have more variety, but overall, there are drops for the average values across all race distances. To pinpoint one key number, the average drop across all scores and age groups is 16.6 points for female athletes who completed a race in 2022 vs in 2024.
For male runners, we can also notice average scores dropping by 18.6 points since 2022, with the 20km distance seeing the biggest drop. There is a general trend on the male side of the shorter race distances seeing a larger drop than the 100m category.
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So, does this mean that average finish times are reducing, too? Our analysis of UTMB finish times would suggest not, and anecdotally we know a lot of people are running faster, course records are regularly being broken, and runners are posting faster times overall. Yet, they are receiving lower UTMB® scores than in previous years.
This is likely more linked to the statistical calculations that the organisation uses and the fact that they have capped the scores at 1000 points to begin with. This means that, as the race leaders run increasingly faster year on year, they cannot receive higher scores than winners of previous editions of the same race (can’t go above 1000!). This, then, ultimately means that the whole field is impacted.