Originality In Road Racing

From my experience working in the road racing industry, originality is hard to find. When our company would brainstorm a new idea, it would be snatched and executed by another local race. Now I don’t think it is a bad idea to use what works, but after a while, every race looks the same. My goal with this blog is to show where the real original ideas for some of the new innovate race came from and who copied who when it comes to remixing the idea for their own.

Ultra Relay Race

If your not familiar with how an ultra relay race works you can view one in more detail here. Basically, you tag team the entire race. Runner one will run the first leg or loop and you’ll meet them at the first hand off point. Then, Runner 2 will take over, and so-on-so-forth until everyone has run three legs or loops. It’s actually really cool because its a very nontraditional way to race and for the average runner they don't even have to train for it. Now there are several of these races and of course, all of them claim to have the original race.

The Ragnar Relay is a company that is to be considered the “original” when comes to overnight relay races. The idea stemmed from a long tradition of runners attempting to run from a small mountain to a beach in one day. Technically speaking the race idea isn't even its own because someone has already tried running their route, but they have over 30 different of these races across the country. Ragnar has several competitors that range from The Odyssey Relay to small local mountain relays.

The Tough Mudder

A more well-known example is the Tough Mudder racing series that now spans globally. Now Tough Mudder claims that their idea for this running mud run was original. The founder of the race was accused of stealing the idea from a college classmate who had come up with the idea for a fundraiser. Now the million dollar company had several copycat races from “Your first mud run” to “Dirty Girl Mud Run”. There have even been some remixes of the race like zombie dashes, warriors runs and obstacle course races which all have the same main concept just a different approach.

The Marathon

My final example is the marathon because of the most obvious example of copyright, remixing, and non-originality. The legend states that a Greek messenger was sent from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated in the Battle of Marathon. They claim he ran the entire distance of 26.2 miles without stopping, but eventually collapsed and died shortly after. There have been numerous tales of when the first race took place, but a great starting point is the 1896 Olympic Games. Since, race organizations have added different features like a wheelchair division, custom finisher medals, and pre-race parties. These features have all been duplicated or remixed by races in there own unique way.

Through this research I enjoyed investigating the originality of each race and where it got its start. I was surprised to find that more often then not the new versions of road races are copies of others. Even the original ideas for races were "stolen" from ideas or greek legends from someone else.