The 4th edition of the IAU Trail World Championships take place on Saturday 6 July in Llanrwst, North Wales. Both the male and female IAU Trail World Champions, Erik Clavery and Maud Gobert, will toe the starting line, in a bid to defend their titles.

The race promises to be a picturesque one, starting in the Welsh town of Llanrwst, which sits in the valley below the Snowdonia Mountains, with the course winding through Gwydyr Forest. The British team’s charge will be spearheaded by Lee Kemp, who won the HOKA Highland Fling 53 back in April, and he will be joined by runner up there, Ricky Lightfoot, who is the former IAAF World Long Distance Mountain Running bronze medallist. Local athlete Iain Ridgway will proudly don the GB & NI vest for the first time, and can be sure of having plenty of crowd support on the course.

The women’s team for the 6 July event will be led by Tracy Dean, who narrowly triumphed over Fionna Cameron at the HOKA Highland Fling 53, and both athletes will be looking to challenge themselves by taking on five laps of the 15km looped course. Unfortunately the team is without Karen Rushton, who has been forced to withdraw from the GB & NI team due to injury.

The French teams look the strongest on paper, but the GB & NI team will certainly be hoping to make use of the home advantage.

British Athletics has worked with the LOC and Welsh Athletics to make the event possible, and a spokesman from Welsh Athletics, Steve Brace concluded:

“We are really excited to be hosting this World Championship event on home soil. It’s a sign of the IAU’s confidence of our abilities here in Wales to host the event and we have been working extremely hard over these last few months to deliver what we feel will be a world-class running event.”

“It has been a pleasure working with Conwy County Borough Council, the IAU and of course the Welsh Government, and we’re proud to be able to showcase this stunning trail running location to the world and show all that Wales has to offer”.

For live updates as the event unfolds, please visit the event website: www.iau-ultramarathon.org