World Athletics has established a standalone Running and Mass Participation department to bring even greater focus to the organisation’s work across the global running ecosystem.
The department will be led by Jakob Larsen, who brings 25 years of experience as an international sports federation executive and industry leader. Larsen has a proven track record of developing and scaling innovative events, including the World Half Marathon Championships in Copenhagen in 2014, the World Cross Country Championships in Aarhus in 2019 and the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship last month in Budapest.
He will work alongside Alessio Punzi, who has been instrumental in establishing World Athletics’ presence and credibility in the running space over the past decade. The department will be responsible for a broad portfolio including World Athletics’ road running, marathon, cross country, mountain and trail events and activities, the RUN X™ World Treadmill Championship, the World Athletics Label Road Races programme, regulation, technical and educational services, and the development of new partnerships and opportunities across technology, data and the wider running industry.
The move comes ahead of this week’s TCS New York City Marathon and during an active year in the running space for World Athletics. This includes the recent success of the World Road Running Championships and Global Running Conference in Copenhagen, the announcement of a standalone World Marathon Championships, the launch of the inaugural RUN X™ World Treadmill Championship and the recent one-year-to-go milestone for the 2027 World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Cape Town.
“World Athletics’ research informs us that at least 1 billion people worldwide are runners in some shape or form, making athletics the most-participated sport in the world,” said World Athletics CEO Jon Ridgeon. “Mass participation running possesses the unique power to engage entire communities. It is a tool for mental wellbeing, wider public health, social cohesion and, for our host cities, economic development. Running is also one of the fastest growing areas of our sport, with millions participating in mass participation events, particularly on the road, every year.
“As the international governing body for athletics, we have a responsibility to use our unique position at the global level to be a positive steward of running within our sport. In practice, that means we need to deliver on three main fronts: to safely govern running activities, to stage pinnacle global running championships that elevate the status of world champions, and to act as a catalyst to grow running – both through our own efforts and by supporting the efforts of others.”
More than 320 road races around the world currently hold a World Athletics road race Label. Linked to the programme is World Athletics’ road race integrity programme, which raises US$3 million per year to support an extensive anti-doping testing programme designed to help keep road running clean. This complements World Athletics’ work in areas including course measurement, official results and safety. In total, World Athletics invests more than US$8 million per year in the Athletics Integrity Unit to help protect the integrity of road races across the globe.
In recent years, World Athletics has also worked to ensure fairness in elite running competition through the regulation of shoe technology, embracing innovation while ensuring all major shoe companies have access to the same technology. World Athletics also invests in a number of health and science initiatives related to running, including race emergency medicine programmes that help upskill hundreds of road race medical directors worldwide.
Its work also includes research into thermoregulation in endurance sport to mitigate health risks, with the findings used to support and educate mass participation organisers as running faces the increasing impact of a warming world.
“We will continue to direct energy and finances into making a much more significant contribution to the running ecosystem because we believe World Athletics is one of the key organisations that can help grow running further and faster, both directly through our own efforts and indirectly through supporting the efforts of others,” said Ridgeon.
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