Ultra endurance feats are the domain of the rich

Ultrarunner Ray Zahab, suddenly jumped into prominence following his 2005 win in the Sahara 250K desert race. Coming at a time when Canada’s last Olympic marathoner had faded into obscurity well before he even crossed the finish line, Zahab’s accomplishment represented the feel-good story of a slow October news cycle. In an era when most Canadians would have trouble making it around the block without getting winded, Zahab’s feat appeared nothing short of impossible and at once seemed to re-affirm the indomitability of the human spirit and assert Canadian dominance in what many consider the ultimate test of endurance.

The fact that people might run because it’s fun has always been puzzling to most Canadians. In fact, running for any reason, bereft of chasing a puck or pursuing a ball, or in the absence of some other corollary goal such as weight loss or new age self-actualization, has never made much sense to the broader population. Hockey players are never asked why they play the game but running requires constant justification. In this paradigm Ray Zahab’s win in the desert would have transcended what many Canadians would have deemed to be possible.

Leaving aside the fact that most pictures from the Sahara race show athletes walking with ski poles and small packs and ignoring, for the time being, the question as to what differentiates running from what appears, for all intents and purposes, to be speed hiking, it’s possible that the ultra-distance events, including the much celebrated Ironman triathlon and it’s cousin the sprint triathlon, are merely a means of tilting the field in favour of wealthy Western nations.

Until recently Canadians hadn’t even earned the right to step to the start line on the world stage in distance events. Instead of figuring out what the Kenyans and Ethiopians ate for breakfast and emulating them, Canadians chose to re-define athletic excellence by conjuring events that most of the world either couldn’t afford to participate in or, ironically, couldn’t afford to win. If Canadians couldn’t win in Boston, they would win in the Sahara; if we couldn’t place in the Olympic Marathon, we would contend in the Leadville 100 and find the podium in Kona.

Consider that the 250K Sahara race costs $3,300 merely to register. This cost of course is only the beginning and does not include airfare, accommodation and support crew. The Ironman Hawaii costs $250 (U.S.) and even the Little Lake Half Ironman Triathlon in Peterborough costs $150 with little beyond bragging rights and a pre-paid participant medal offered to the first across the line. Again this only represents a small fraction of the actual cost of competing, which by necessity includes a bike that can rival the cost of a small car and access to training facilities; both crucial factors that favour Western nations and exclude the very same African nations that have dominated endurance events for the last 40 years. Not surprisingly, Canada found that it could do well in this limited and exclusive pool of athletes.

Ultra-events often don’t have prize money and trend towards handing out belt-buckles to winners and sometime distributing buckles to all finishers. In countries where $2,000 dollars in prize money could go a long way, few high-end distance runners could see the point in weeks of plodding training in return for a souvenir.

In triathlon, going through the ranks of professional men’s and women’s results reads like a list of G20 nations. Even the nascent Kenyan Triathlon Association tends to favour white athletes of means. A quick perusal of ultrarunning standings reveals the same phenomenon. Montrail Cup and Leadville 100 standings are exclusively owned by Canadians and Americans and the odd European willing and able to cross the pond.

When Canada and the United States faced off yet again in the women’s 2010 Olympic gold medal hockey game, the IOC justifiably called into question whether or not women’s hockey was a sport that was sufficiently developed to be included in the Winter Games. This kind of question could just as easily be asked of the triathlon and ought to at least restrain our esteem for events that are the exclusive domain of the privileged.

Ray Zahab and top triathletes are the embodiment of many laudable traits that Canadian hold dear. Both are hard working, humble and quietly determined. Both are generous with their time and have achieved remarkable feats of endurance. But it’s worth asking what the podium of Ironman and ultra distance events would look like if the world could afford to afford to train and top endurance athletes in Africa competed in them.