April
07
MICHEL POLETTI RESIGNS AS ITRA PRESIDENT, TO FOCUS UPON MANAGEMENT OF UTMB AND ULTRA TRAIL WORLD TOUR.
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International Trail Running Association (ITRA) announced a few minutes ago that Michel Poletti has resigned as President ITRA for personal reasons effective today. As Michel pointed out in his farewell statement (see below) he has been the dominant figure in the association as its uninterrupted president for all seven years since its conception, winning all and every election held since.
After his resignation, and despite volunteers coming forward to present theirselves as candidates, it was finally decided, that the Steering Committee will continue to lead ITRA, until a new President is elected. The official communication toady was signed by Enrico Pollini as Secretary General of ITRA.
ITRA Announces Leadership Transition after Michel Poletti´s resignation.
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International Trail Running Association (ITRA) announced a few minutes ago that Michel Poletti has resigned as President ITRA for personal reasons effective today. As Michel pointed out in his final words (see below) he has been the dominant figure in the association as its uninterrupted president for all seven years since its conception, winning all and every election since. Tnis situation has led to the organisation current internal tensions , shown in the long time taken in drafting the final official communication after the initial mail by Michel to some (not all) the members of the Steering committee.
As of today, the Steering Committee has chosen to publicly thank Michel’ for those seven years of leadership since the establishment of ITRA. Certainly this move was deemed by many stakeholders of the global sport community as most necessary, since there was a severe potential for conflict of interests to arise, given Michel role as founder-owner of UTMB since its origin, plus the recent UTMB takeover of Ultra Trail World Tour back in March 2019. Michel is also expected to bring with him back to the UTMB organization some of the members that worked originally for it but have been as of late been carrying out leading roles in ITRA, ever since the original staff for ITRA was hired under a 50/50 timework split working for UTMB and are obviosuly most familiar with Michel´s properties already.
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Therefore it was evident that the Commitee will choose to accept and support his decision to step down for personal reasons . Nevertheless, given the peculiar rules of ITRA, Michel will continue to have significant power an relevancy as one of the privileged founding members of ITRA, such as Jose Santos or Jean Franc García which are currently the two other “permanent” members of the Global Steering Commitite in opposition to the other eight “organizers” members or the six “runners” members.
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Michel Poletti declarations:“I am very proud of the path accomplished by ITRA since its creation in 2013, and very happy to have initiated its creation and supervised its development during these seven years. ITRA has reached an important stage in its development and will have to confirm its position as the leading reference in the development of trail-running. It is therefore important to have all of ITRA’s forces 100% involved in this mission. However, at the dawn of celebrating my 65th birthday and while the UTMB is also experiencing an intense phase of development, I feel the need to slow down a bit. It is therefore natural for me to hand over to ITRA”.
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