On Saturday, August 30, as most of the Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc racers were about midway through the 104-mile tour around Europe’s biggest peak, an exposé in the French newspaper “Le Dauphine Libéré” hit the stands. The story asked some hard questions about the race, now in its 12th year. What had once been a fringe event has swollen to a handful of different races with a total field of 7,500 athletes from 77 different countries, arguably the most celebrated ultra in the world.

With the UTMB’s global prominence has come the same curse that plagues all popular events: the supply of starting positions is much smaller than the demand for those spots. And so UTMB, like so many ultras that fill up immediately, limits the field by requiring applicants to gain a number of points by completing qualifying races. No triathlons, multi-sport events or orienteering competitions count and the race organization restricts applicants to only a limited number of qualifying trail races for scoring their requisite points. According to the UTMB site, the “evaluation of the races, and therefore the distribution of points, is from now on managed by the ITRA (International Trail Running Association). The Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc®, on the basis of the number of points attributed by the ITRA, however are alone in judging whether a race presents all the criteria to be a qualifying race, to register it on the list and to award the organiser with the corresponding logo.”

It is that qualification process that is the source of the problem, according to the story in Le Dauphine Libéré. The exposé, which begins with Rory Bosio’s 2013 victorious finish – one that she repeated this year – and quotes Catherine Poletti who, together with her husband, Michel Poletti, serve as the race directors. Catherine Poletti had instructed Bosio to immediately present herself for the drama at Chamonix’s ceremonious start/finish when Bosio needed to breathe and gain her composure. Catherine Poletti had said to that, “it is my race, I can do as I want.”

That certainly sets the exposé’s tone which, when you boil it down, called out the Polettis for controlling not just the UTMB and its organization but also ITRA, which is charged with granting the highly-sought-after ordination of “qualifying race” status to trail races around the world. The story points out the interlocking boards and the fact that the Polettis have hand-picked those in power at ITRA, which is a French association, not unlike the Boston Athletic Association, which selects the qualifiers for the pinnacle Boston Marathon. The difference between the two organizations, however, is that, according to the Le Dauphine Libéré story, races have to pay a membership fee (minimum of 100 Euros) to join ITRA in order to receive approval and the almost-guaranteed boost in entries because those seeking UTMB entry must accumulate a rather hefty eight points in order to apply, thus putting a real premium on being a certified qualifying race. In other words, races have to play and the Polettis have set up this system by which they gain, although – at least not until the story broke – indirectly through their pet association, ITRA.

As Catherine Poletti points out, the UTMB is her race and she and her husband certainly put on an awesome event, one that brings in big revenues to the entire Mont Blanc region. And while it isn’t unusual for organizations to charge a membership fee to cover the administrative costs of certifying applicants and 100 Euros is a small price to pay in return of an almost-guaranteed increase in participants, what is seen as unscrupulous is the way the Polettis have been so quiet about their supposed “neutral” association. What those in the know object to is that the Polettis have failed to disclose their level of control, the business objectives or their increased power within the ultra racing world.