9th WMMRC 2009

Allow me to, on the ending of 9th World masters mountain running championship, in the name of the Organizing committee and my own personal name, say thank you to all those who have in any way helped in the organization and also the implementation of this manifestation.

I thank to WMRA and Mr. Bruno Gozzellino, the president, on giving us the possibility to organize the World championship and also to Mr. Tomo Šarf, the delegate, on his useful advices.

I thank to the City of Zagreb and the mayor Mr. Milan Bandić as a general sponsor and to the Ministry of tourism and Minister Mr. Damir Bajs, our sponsor.

I thank to City office for education, culture and sports and to the Zagreb sports association.

I thank to all the sponsors as to the volunteers who haven’t felt sorry for all the effort and time to make this a successful manifestation and to make the participants and the honored guests to feel pleasant.

Thank you and greetings to everybody and a lot of luck next year in Poland!

Davor Vukmirić, president of the Organizing committee

This is a special year for the World Mountain Running movement. We are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the World Mountain Running Trophy, which has finally been designated a “Championship” for 2009. In spite of this very positive step, it has also been a difficult year – we have lost our president who was a pioneer of mountain running worldwide. Mr. Danny Hughes has certainly made an impact in every aspect of our sport. The World Masters Mountain Running Championships in Zagreb will be the first major WMRA event to welcome our new WMRA president who will have been elected just one week before at the WMRA Congress meeting. In Croatia, mountain running has enjoyed a long tradition with many well-organized races, but the majority of participants are Croatian runners with some runners from neighboring countries. The World Masters Mountain Running Championships will bring a new challenge to Croatian mountain running officials with runners coming from across the globe to participate. It is not easy to coordinate all the necessary logistics so that everybody is happy, particularly in the case of Masters’ event which requires additional timing for the many age categories that are each run separately. Previous organizers have set high standards for the World Masters Championships and I am confident that the organizers in Zagreb will perform to these standards and stage a very successful event. On behalf of the WMRA, Tomo Šarf, WMRA delegate Ljubljana, April 2009

Welcome to The World Masters Mountain Running Championship which will be, for the first time, staged in a capital of one of the IAAF or WMRA members! Croatia was assigned for the organization of the world championship, after joining the mountain running movement at the year of 2002 and by regularly participating at the world and european championships and by organizing the ‘Sljemenski maraton’ which hosted the members of management of World Mountain Running Association (WMRA). Zagreb, and also the track where you will be competing, visited the president Danny Hughes himself and has in a direct way assured about all the great potentials of Medvednica. The veterans athletics has passed through a great expansion, which has also reflected on the mountain running and permanent annual rise in Croatia on about twenty races that are held all around Croatia, and with the track on Medvednica the tracks that are specially attractive are the ones whose start line is in the sea, and the finish line on thousand and a couple of hundred meters on the nearby mountain peaks of Velebit, Učka, Biokovo…. Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, has been hosting championships of the European and world level, numerous times, and in all the different sports. We don’t remember that the participants of those competitions and also the guests have left unpleased with the organization or hospitality of the host. Forthcoming months will be directed to making sure that preparations and also the event itself justify your expectations and sets up new standards for the ones yet to come! Davor Vukmirić president of the organizing committee Zagreb, April 2009

Danny was born in Seaforth, Liverpool, the oldest of four boys. His early memories were those of war time – sheltering under the table when the alarm sounded. When he was five the family moved to Penketh to escape the worst of the bombing.

Danny grew up surrounded by green fields, with the canal and River Mersey close by spending time playing football, cricket, and other sports. At the age of 13 he joined Warrington Athletic Club. While there he met Les Bristow, who was to become his greatest rival and best friend. Les introduced Danny to the wonders of the Lake District which included climbing the mountains in the Langdale Valley. At the age of 15 Danny moved to Wigan Technical and Mining College to do his O and A levels before going to Liverpool University in 1954 to study electrical engineering. Liverpool University opened up many more opportunities for athletic competition and Danny immediately joined the cross country team, which was very successful during those years, and took part in track athletics, holding the mile and half mile record for several years. He made many friends during this time and some of his cross country friends were members of the Christian Union. They invited Danny to some of their meetings and, during his final year there, he became a committed Christian.
On finishing university in July 1958 with a BA in Electrical Engineering, Danny applied for a job at Sellafield with UKAEA, as his one desire was to live in the Lake District which he had fallen in love with in his teens.

Danny continued to run cross country for Warrington Ac when he moved to Cumbria, but it was a long distance to travel and he finally joined the Barrow AC. There were few opportunities for track races in the summer so de decided to have a go at fell running, which mostly took place during the summer months.

In the 60s, Danny met Norma Wilson whilst Scottish Country Dancing at Greengarth and the next week invited her to go to Carlisle with him to a road race from Brampton to Carlisle which was on her eighteenth birthday. Danny and Norma were married at Muncaster Church in 1963 and started their married life at High Eskholme, Muncaster. Danny became a confirmed member of the Church of England and took an exam to become a Lay Reader in the church, a position he was to hold for the rest of his life.

Norma well remembers Danny’s first fell race – the 1964 Vaux Mountain Trial in Wasdale. The runners set off in the direction of Great Gable, disappearing into the mist almost immediately. It was an orienteering type of race and runners chose their route between checkpoints. Danny got hopelessly lost finding the first checkpoint and retired! Joss Naylor, the already famous fell runner who lived and farmed in the Wasdale Valley, also got lost on Seatallen and retired. The experience didn’t dampen Danny’s enthusiasm for the sport and he was soon back taking fell running very seriously, and it became his favourite sport.

Danny also participated in orienteering, which had moved across the north sea from Scandinavia and was becoming popular in the UK. He became one of the ten founder members of the W. Cumberland Orienteering Club and also joined Frank Travis and Jo Long on the Cumberland Fell Running Association committee who organised the annual Ennerdale Horseshoe race. Having run for Barrow AC for a few years, he then moved to Kendal AC who had an active fell running team and started competing in other long distance races like the Ennerdale Horseshoe.

Danny always had a vision for the future in all the organisations he became a part of and soon the CFRA were organising not only the Ennerdale Horseshoe but six other races, namely – Wasdale Horseshoe, Muncaster Fell Race, Bake Fell Race, Copeland Chase, Northern Counties Fell Race (from Buttermere) and the Kinniside Fell Race. In 1986 a new fell running club was founded – Cumberland Fell Runners – with Joss Naylor as Chairman and Danny as Secretary. Danny also joined the Fell Runners Association and was Chairman from 1980 – 1984.

It was during this time that he met up with the Italian mountain runners and the International Committee for Mountain Running (ICMR) was formed with Angelo Biasi as President and Danny as Secretary, and the first Mountain Running World Trophy was organised in Italy in 1984. This organization later became the World Mountain Running Association and Danny became President in 1993. Danny hadn’t competed in races himself since 1996, when he had a serious illness, but still jogged three or four times a week to keep himself fit.

As we celebrate 25 years of the WMRA this September, we also celebrate one of the projects Danny worked tirelessly toward – the Championships designation for the World Mountain Trophy.

Danny will be remembered not only by his family – to include sons David and John, daughter Rachel, and five grandchildren – but also his mountain running family throughout the world. As Norma relates, “Danny’s all-consuming interest was mountain running and he has travelled all over the world helping to organise mountain races.”

The WMRA Council looks forward to continuing on the path that Danny helped form – one that will surely include continued growth in our sport, further worldwide participation, and opportunities for athletes and administrators to share ideas and their love of mountain running.

We have had a conversation with a living legend of Croatian athletic, a man whose 1.44,07 on 800m from Rome in 1974. today still represents unreachable score for many active athletes and is very high on the world athletics scoreboards. Luciano Sušanj is a president of Croatian athletics federation and the vice president of Croatian Olympic committee. We carry over his thoughts about the world championship and mountain running in general, and also about the meaning that this event has for Croatia.

Luciano Sušanj & Davor Vukmirić

Croatia has serious and long athletic tradition, but mountain running is relatively young sports discipline which has, thanks to a few enthusiasts, also in Croatia become very expanded form of recreation, but also a sports challenge, following the European and global trends. In the world, this discipline has passed through and outstanding development because of numerous of reasons. First of all because it takes place in nature, but also because of aim of many for seeking the new sports disciplines that aren’t necessarily olympic. Here is obviously present an amount of adrenalin through kind of adventurism. In the beginning, mountain running was reserved only for the recreational athletes and the ones who gave what they had to give on track. Today, for that type of non stadium athletic, decide the young, as their primary challenge. Thanks to that kind of approach, Croatia regularly has individual and team representatives on European and World Championships and with enhanced results.

World championship for veterans isn’t classical athletic competition for more than one reasons but it is extremely important for athletics and sport in Croatia. In fact, it is the first world championship on the ground of the republic of Croatia, and that is on the guidance of IAAF, International Association of Athletics Federations. Therewith, it is a chance for affirmation in the athletic circles, and with the good organization, also a possibility to apply for future European and world championships and not only in masters categories. Because of that, we did our best to create the great organization committee and appointed Davor Vukmirić, the member of executive committee of Croatian Athletics Federation for president and also supported his proposition of his closest coworkers. All of them are experienced and affirmed persons from all the segments of society, not only athletics, who will without a doubt set up new standards for incoming world championships and in spite of omnipresent recession. Here i want to emphasize that athletics is a sport of enthusiasts and volunteers and that in athletics, which makes the differences from other so called elite sports, there are no large money funds, but that never questions the expertise of the people and the quality of the competitions. Exactly the opposite! Joyful information is that the organization committee is looking for a way to implement the competition of children from athletic schools and also the Open race, the race for the active athletics younger than 35, as a part of this championship. It would be a huge bonus for the event and i hope they will succeed in they plan.

The special dimension to this world championship gives also the tourism component and the comparative advantages of Croatia as a tourist destination. As a part of the sponsorship, Ministry of Tourism and the Croatian National Tourist Board have also joined in and by the web pages offered the competitors the possibility to stay on vacation, before or after the championship. Some will for sure for the first time visit Croatia and it would really be a shame not to see Dubrovnik, Plitvice national park, Istria, Dalmatia, the islands… I can see incoming applications from Venezuela, Mexico, New Zealand, Moldavia… And up until now there has already been two hundred participants. Further advantage of the masters world championship is the fact that all you have to do is be older than 35 to participate. You don’t have to be a registered athlete, but you can be a grateful tourist, tourist and an athlete looking for the additional content to go with the active vacation.

In the end, i would like to thank everyone working on the successful organization, as also to the ones who are contributing to development of non stadium athletics in Croatia. I am convinced that this will be one of the world championships with the highest number of participants and what especially thrills is the possibility that is given to the Croatian athletes to, for the first time in the history, compete in the world championship, under the management of the IAAF in their own country! And to them, who will defend the colors of Croatia, and to all our dear guests i wish a lot of sports accomplishment and a great time.

Luciano Sušanj