Threshold Trail Series, the people behind the much-loved UK ultras Race to the King and Race to The Stones, has a big goal for 2024: to achieve 50% female participation in its events.
Since 2013, these events have consistently welcomed a higher proportion of female athletes than the industry standard. But now it wants to go one step further and achieve gender parity.
So it's launched a campaign called Ultra 50:50, which aims to inspire and support women to get on the start line of some of the most exciting and challenging running events in the UK this year (not just its own) through a range of new initiatives and partnerships.
Since the Covid pandemic there has been a 10% drop in female participation across running events of all distances.
And data collected by Threshold Sports found that female participation in 5K races in the UK has fallen from 66% in 2019 to 52% in 2023.
But the disparity is starkest in ultras, where women make up fewer than a third of participants: female participation in UK ultras dropped from a depressingly low 32% in 2022 to just 30% in 2023.
To understand the challenges that prevent women from taking part in ultramarathons, Threshold Sports has partnered with SheRaces, an organisation founded by Sophie Power, campaigning for equality and inclusivity in sport, as well as grassroots running groups, female runners and women not already in the running community.
Surveying over 500 female ultrarunners, together they identified five key challenges that women face when preparing for and taking part in ultramarathons:
- Female representation and perceptions
- Training and preparation
- Access and support at events
- Safety and harassment
- Menstrual health and the menopause
So, how is the campaign aiming to break these barriers down?
To begin with, Threshold Sports has adopted the SheRACES guidelines across its events – a set of guidelines that race directors can follow to ensure their races are accessible to, and support, female participants, from ensuring there are adequate female toilet facilities to pushing for equal prize money in competitions.
And it hopes that by showcasing the changes its making to its own events – and by raising awareness of the challenges women face – it can provide a commercially sustainable blueprint for other event organisers that share this mission.
Nick Tuppen, CEO at Threshold sports, said: ‘Our ambition is to achieve gender parity at the Trail Series, but it shouldn’t stop there… what we learn and implement during this campaign could help to raise standards across the industry.’
Over the coming months, Theshold Sports will also undertake a series of initiatives to tackle some of these challenges ahead of this summer’s events.
It's also recruited a team of real female 'Ultra 50:50 challengers' to help inspire other women to take on the challenge.
This includes Romey Langley – a new and first-time mum looking to prove that giving birth doesn’t mean you have to hang up your trainers – and Deborah Ward-Johnstone, a two-time cancer survivor, who will be celebrating her five-anniversary of getting the all-clear by taking part in the 50km Race to the King.
'This is a big stretch for me,' says Ward-Johnstone. 'I’ve cheered my husband along for four marathons, but I’ve always told myself I couldn’t do it and my stoma was a bit of an excuse! Now, I’ve been cancer-free for five years – if this isn’t the right time to take on such a physical challenge, then I don’t know when is. I know that it’s okay to walk, and besides: why not go one better than my husband?'
For more on the campaign, vist thresholdtrailseries.com/ultra-5050
