What Happens to Trail Running When It Grows Up?

A follow-up to Who Decides What Trail Running Becomes? after spending time in Stockholm with Klättermusen CEO Gonz Ferrero Sormlands 100 RD Billy White.

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece called Who Decides What Trail Running Becomes?

The core idea was that runners are no longer the only force shaping the future of the sport. Brands, race organizations, media companies, and investors are increasingly influencing where trail running goes and what gets amplified along the way.

After publishing it, I flew to Stockholm to test the idea against two people actively building inside the sport:

Billy White, founder of Sörmlands 100, one of the largest independent trail races in Sweden, and Gonz Ferrero, CEO of Klättermusen, a 50-year-old heritage outdoor brand entering trail running intentionally.

The conversation became less about whether growth is good or bad and more about what happens when trail running starts optimizing for two very different things at the same time: A professional spectator sport and a grassroots dirtbag culture.

Both require very different structures, incentives, and experiences. And the bigger one side gets, the harder it becomes to preserve the feeling of the other.

The people building around trail running are not necessarily trying to turn it into something bigger, cleaner, or more commercial.

Some are trying to figure out how the sport can grow without losing the strange, human qualities that made people fall in love with it in the first place.

That became the real conversation.