Participation and Performance Trends in the Oldest 100-km Ultramarathon in the World The trends of participation and performance at the ultramarathon show showed an increase in the participants and improving performance for large records and long periods. However, the decades of analysis of ultramarathons is missing.These trends were analyzed for 96'036 athletes (88'286 men and 7'750 women) from 67 countries, which at the ‘100 km run Biel’ in Switzerland, the oldest 100 km ultramarathon in the world, the oldest 100 km long ultramarathon in the worldwent the start. In all years more men participated as women.The number of male participants reached a climax around 1985 and then there was a decline in participation.Women began in 1962 with the competition. The men were getting faster than the women and both the women as well as men improved their terms over the years. After about 1985, both women and men as well as female and male winners could not improve the maturities. For men, the athletes of all age groups reached a climax of participation in the 1980s under the age of 49 and have been a decline since then. In terms of age groups, the decline initially began in the age group of 20 to 29 years, followed by 30 to 39, 40 to 49, 50 to 59 and 60 to 69 years.For the athletes in the age groups 70-79 and 80-89 years ago no acceptance occurred.For the women, age group athletes increased their participation in age groups 40-49, 50-59 and 60-69 years, while age groups 20-29 and 30-39 reached and started their climax at the end of the 1980s.stabilize. Switzerland, Germany and France were the countries with the highest number of participants in the history of the race.In the men, the maturities slowed for most nationalities after about 1990;Only runners from Germany seemed to stabilize their performance.In women, runners from Italy, France and Austria improved their performance over the years.
In summary, the analysis of the oldest 100 km long ultramarathons in the world revealed a decline in participation and a deterioration of performance in the last 60 years. These changes were attributable to a decline in the number of male ultramarathon runners in the 1980s, which mainly returned the number of runners in age groups under the age of 70. The whole study can be found under https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/5/1719