Top 10 Nepali Mountain Runners as of 2022 (Source: ITRA rankings)
Mountain and trail running Nepal
Pictures credits : Various internet sources
Mountain and trail running discipline, is quite new for Nepal. Even though few Nepali runners were given opportunities since past decade to race in the international mountain races- it was only since 2016 that Nepal started coming into the highlights because of the performance of the outstanding athletes.
Gorkha’s Bhim Bahadur Gurung had set a record in Skyrunning championships in Trofeo Kima 50 against the now World champion Kilian Jornet (Kilian eventually broke the record in 2018)! . Mira Rai’s fame has been unparalleled in the trail running community globally and the recent @sunmayabudha Budha’s epic finish against the IUA top French athlete in UTMB France left everyone gasping.
Priya Rai’s win in the 50k DoiInthanon Thailand by UTMB has also brought her to the international eyes. She has recently signed endorsement contract with the Vietnamese Sportswear Brand MUDE SPORTS.
Nepal has given world class mountain and skyrunning athletes to the world who have smashed it without much formal training nor proper gears. Who were the athletes who were given an opportunity to race in the international championships and how did they fare ? And how are their ITRA scores calculate ?
Many of Nepali athletes, have been out of the global performance index because of the lack of racing in these standard ITRA ranked races. Which means, even if they win many races in Nepal, without the ITRA standard their wins doesn’t give them a competitive edge which is a huge disadvantage for Nepal and ineffective use of the public funded sponsorships to organise Nepali trail races with an objective of Sports Tourism.
For Men’s category score above 827 and for Women’s category score above 700 is considered to be Elite and World class.
Authored by Preeti Khattri. Preeti has been involved in the trail running scene in Nepal since 2017, and worked with various organizations like Go heritage runs, Trail Running Nepal, Himalayan Adventure Labs, and PG Coach Bootcamp within and outside of Nepal. She has been part of more than 23 races and served as the race director of the first 10 race league-Kathmandu trail race series managed by Trail Running Nepal. She managed Mira Rai Initiative until 2019, helping Rai to launch the scholarship project for Nepali female athletes. Preeti founded her own project- Nepal trail series in 2019, to launch more trail-running business projects like training camps and retreats and to build a systematic team to manage Nepali mountain athletes. She manages the rising trail running star Sunmaya Budha- for the North Face team and serves as a technical advisor for the Mountain Sports Federation Nepal affiliated with the National Sports Council, Nepal.