Freetrail is proud to launch the fourth edition of Trail Runner of The Year (TROY) – a global award recognizing the great professional athletes who populate our sport, ranking their collective accomplishments during the 2025 racing season. As usual, in addition to TROY, we will vote on the best individual race performances of the season through our Trail Performance of the Year (TPOY) vote.

This year, we are honored to bring the award to life in collaboration with All Conditions Gear. 

What follows is an explainer for our motivation for TROY, what’s new for 2025, some instructions, and practical information you’ll use to shape your ballot.

Why We Do This

Over the last fifteen years, trail running has evolved into a legitimate international sport. It’s also experienced rapid professionalization. Like many global professional sports, trail running deserves a year-end distinction for those athletes whose performances have stood out on the international racing circuit. Trail Runner of the Year (TROY) is an extension of Freetrail’s mission to elevate the profile of the professional athletes in our sport, while helping casual observers and the general public feel connected to their stories – hopefully creating diehard fans in the process.

What’s New for 2025

The vote will again be open to all trail fans globally in 2025 with one exciting new addition.

Trail Team of the Year (TTOY)

New for 2025, we thought it would be fun to add a team element to the awards. Inspired by the Constructors Championship in Formula 1, the goal is to highlight the brand team who performed the best on the world’s stage across disciplines. We’ll recognize one single winner of TTOY, combining men and women under their unified brand teams. The result of TTOY will be derivative of the results of TROY – using the standings from TROY to ascertain team strength. In other words, it will not be a separate vote but a new award based on the full results of the TROY vote – making the TROY vote even more significant!

The Parameters

• TROY is a ranking of race performance portfolios from only the 2025 season. Performances from previous years should not be considered.
• TROY is a trail running specific award. While we have nothing but respect for athletes who race on the road or track, those performances should not be considered.
• TROY is trail racing specific. While FKTs are historic and culturally important, TROY aims to focus on head to head competitions, leaving FKTs to be celebrated in their own category with the folks over at Fastest Known Time.  
• TROY is distance agnostic. We are grouping everything from VKs to 200+ mile races under the greater discipline of trail running. It is the responsibility of voters to be informed about the performances across this vast spectrum and to endeavor to eliminate personal bias for certain distances, instead deferring to the criteria listed below.
• TROY is not a popularity contest. One of the great things about trail running is that the pro athletes are genuine, friendly, and humble people. It’s why we want to recognize their achievements. However, this vote should not reflect who you most love to follow on social media, but instead who performed best on the race course. 

Voting Considerations

For those who do vote, we encourage you to take that responsibility seriously, applying research and deep consideration to the ranking. We hope you’ll meditate on the following criteria before submitting your ballot:

• Depth of competition – Reward those athletes who performed best on the biggest stages, against the deepest fields.
• Consistency of performance – Consider the whole season in context and reward those athletes who raced well consistently, while weighing outstanding single performances accordingly.
• Versatility of performance – As I mentioned, TROY is distance agnostic. As such, consider and reward the athletes who display ability to compete across distances and terrain variation.
• Geographical bias – Freetrail has an international audience, but we are North America based and english speaking. We hope the voters will have advanced-level knowledge of the international dynamics in the sport, including which races are significant across the myriad of international event series (World Mountain Running Association, Golden Trail Series, UTMB World Series, Golden Ticket, Skyrunning, etc.).

Instructions for Voting

• Voting is open now for TROY and TPOY!
• Voting will be open for two weeks, closing at Noon PST on Monday, December 16th.
• Pick 10-deep for both the men and women in TROY. Incomplete ballots will still be counted. If you don’t feel confident picking all ten, feel free to stop early rather than picking randomly.
• Athletes are listed in alphabetical order to eliminate bias that could result from ranking by UTMB Index or UltraSignup rating – read the whole list!
• When you click on an athlete’s name, you’ll find deep resources to inform your ballot including results from the season, links to databases, and the athlete’s various social media accounts. Take your time and use the information provided!
• While we did our best to assemble what we thought were the top performers of the year it’s possible that we missed someone or a specific result for an individual athlete already on the list. If that is the case, please contact us with TROY in the subject line.
• When you submit your ballot, you’ll have the ability to make edits all the way up until the time voting closes at Noon PST on Monday, December 16th, at which time picks will be locked in.
• The winners will be announced starting January 1st 2026.

Finally, a huge thank you to Travis Loncar, who created and built the TROY & TPOY platform from scratch.

Let’s end this season on a high note. Go vote!