SKYRUNNING – RACING TO REACH THE SKY

A sport born in the wild, skyrunning was founded in the early 90’s by Italian mountaineer, Marino Giacometti – no wonder it’s a mixture of trail running and mountaineering. Since then, hundreds of thousands of adventure-seeking, adrenaline junkies all over the world have taken their place behind a skyrace starting line, ready to race where the earth meets the sky. From the Italian Alps to the Canadian Rockies, today, there are over 200 skyraces in 65 countries.

At the summit of the sport is the Skyrunner® World Series. Every year, the official skyrunning circuit regroups 16 - 17 of the most impressive and technical skyraces, where top athletes of the sport compete for the overall title of “The Best Skyrunner in the World”. Since it was launched in 2004, the Skyrunner® World Series has grown to become the peak of outdoor running defined by altitude and technicality and every skyrunner’s ultimate goal.

Unlike trail running, which goes around the mountain, the object of skyrunning is to run from a town or village, to the summit of the mountain and back down again. That means plenty of technical scrambling, sometimes even fixed ropes and chains, high-altitude, glaciers, boulder-fields and steep and demanding downhills. To be able to move safe and fast on such terrain, skyrunners depend heavily on their equipment. A skyrunner’s garments must be lightweight and highly-developed to support their performance and the demanding conditions they are faced with.

Since 2015, Compressport has been an official partner of the Skyrunner® World Series, providing skyrunners all over the world with the clothing and gear they need to prepare muscles for such intense effort, to travel light and fast in the mountains and to limit muscle damage and soreness afterwards. 

Compressport athletes including Elisa Desco, Marco De Gasperi, Denisa Dragomir and Thibaut Garrivier were some of the top-performers of the 2019 skyrunning season with Denisa Dragomir winning the end-of-season grand finale, the SkyMasters, and Elisa Desco placing 3 rd in the overall Skyrunner® World Series season ranking.

Unfortunately, this year, due to COVID-19, all races of the Skyrunner® World Series until July have been cancelled or postponed. However, together with Compressport, the Skyrunner® World Series has introduced a virtual circuit – the Skyrunner® VIRTUAL Series. The goal of the Skyrunner® VIRTUAL Series, is to bring people together, digitally, and inspire and motivate anyone, anywhere to take part and connect with the skyrunning community all over the world.

The first virtual skyrace on the 19 th April – a replacement for the Mt. Awa Skyrace in Japan that originally would have taken place on that date but has been postponed until October – gathered over 1,200 participants of 81 nationalities at the start line. Social media came alive with all the creative ways the community got involved with the race. We saw runners of all levels and ages drawing their own race bibs, creating racecourses in their garden and even editing their own race highlights as a way to forget the current situation and have some fun.

The next race will be the virtual version of the world-famous Transvulcania Ultramarathon on the 9 th of May where we look forward to seeing even more athletes and nationalities coming together and connecting with one another - exactly what the world needs right now.