Can Spain dominate the Slovenian trail European Championship with Merillas?

The European Off-Road Championship takes place from June 5 to 7 in Ljubljana-Kamnik, Slovenia, with Spain fully in the serious medal conversation. Not because of barstool enthusiasm, which also runs high in trail running, but for something heavier: recent results, a deep squad, and several runners who have already shown they don’t flinch when the mountain turns ugly. The event brings together 593 athletes from 33 countries, the largest turnout in the championship’s history, and is split across three disciplines: Uphill, Trail Running and Up & Down.

The Spanish national team arrives with 32 preselected athletes, 15 men and 17 women, and with six medalists from the Canfranc-Pirineos World Championships among its biggest names. The absence of Sara Alonso, announced ahead of time for medical reasons, takes some edge off the women’s squad, but it doesn’t erase an uncomfortable reality for their rivals: Spain no longer goes to the trail European Championships to learn the landscape. It goes there to race it. The latest update from Mayayo puts the spotlight right there: a demanding schedule, heavyweight favorites and a Spanish team traveling with hunger, not folklore.

A bigger, more alpine and less forgiving European Championship

The European Off-Road Championship arrives in Slovenia with the feel of a grown-up championship. Third edition of a competition that was born in El Paso, La Palma, in 2022, continued in Annecy in 2024 and now lands in the setting of Kamnik and the Kamnik-Savinja Alps, a beautiful postcard only until you have to climb it with a bib on. That’s where the tourist brochure ends and the truth begins: wet trails, long climbs, descents where the quadriceps negotiate with faith, and an elevation profile that does not forgive excess optimism.

The organizers have sold the championship as a festival also open to popular runners, with parallel races and the atmosphere of a major mountain event. It makes sense. Modern trail running lives on that curious border between elite sport and weekend ritual: some are fighting for Europe, others for making it to the beer in one piece. Muscular democracy, you could call it. But the race that matters here is another one. It’s the one between national teams, the one of exact seconds, the one of tiny decisions: when to use poles if there are any, when to eat, when not to look back even if you can hear someone breathing down your neck.

The participation figure carries weight. 593 entries and 33 countries are not just a pretty number for a press release. They speak of a sport that has stopped being the oddity of four guys with wire-thin calves and Salomon-branded backpacks. Trail running and mountain running are now a continental discipline with hierarchies, national teams, planning, youth development and that inevitable touch of athletic bureaucracy that comes with anything that grows. The mountain, fortunately, still acts as a filter. There, a résumé helps, but it doesn’t push the legs.

The schedule: three days and three ways to suffer

The competition kicks off on Friday, June 5 with the Uphill, the pure climbing race. In the senior category it will be 8.9 kilometers, with a start in Stahovica, finish in Gradišče and 1,280 meters of ascent, plus 80 meters of descent. In plain terms: a natural staircase of almost nine kilometers, with oxygen as a hard-nosed creditor. The under-20s will have their own version, 3.8 kilometers long with 425 meters of positive elevation, short only in appearance; those distances, when they tilt upward, bite like a small dog.

Saturday, June 6 brings the long Trail Running race, 52 kilometers with start and finish in Kamnik’s main square. The course adds 2,450 meters of positive elevation gain and the same amount of descent. It’s not an endless ultra, but it’s not a bib-wearing stroll either. It’s the kind of route that punishes the runner who thinks they’re untouchable after two hours and sends the bill in the fourth, with interest and fine print. The elite start is set for 9:00 a.m., men and women together, a detail that always leaves a powerful image: the whole pack launched from the urban heart toward a mountain that quickly puts things in order.

Sunday, June 7 will be the turn of Up & Down, the classic mountain race with climbing and descending. In the senior category it’s 13.1 kilometers with 825 meters up and 825 down, also starting and finishing in Kamnik. Here, climbing well is not enough. You have to descend better. Or at least descend without giving away half your life on every turn. The under-20s will compete over 5.7 kilometers with 325 meters of positive and negative elevation. The day will close the championship with the victory ceremonies and the final act in Kamnik’s main square.

The detail that separates a medal from a good excuse

In this European Championship, it’s not necessarily the one who runs fastest on the flat or boasts the most elevation on Strava who wins. It’s the one who mixes engine, technique, a cool head and a rare virtue: not panicking when the terrain changes language. The Uphill favors the pure climbers, the Trail Race rewards the complete and patient runner, and the Up & Down demands that slightly suicidal talent for descending fast without turning every stone into an invitation to the hospital. Beautiful, yes. Clean, not always.

Spain arrives with a squad that no longer sounds like a promise

The Spanish men’s team has names to compete seriously. In Trail Running there will be Francisco José Anguita, José Ángel Fernández “Canales”, Diego Menéndez and Alain Santamaría. Menéndez arrives as Spanish champion, Canales brings World Championship experience, Anguita already knows the European stage and Santamaría comes off a very strong international 2025, with a fourth place at the World Championships in short trail and team gold in Canfranc. This is not a filler lineup. It’s a statement.

In the men’s Up & Down, one of the most interesting lineups of the entire championship for Spain appears: Andreu Blanes, Alejandro García, Manuel Merillas and Jan Torrella. Blanes represents that modern versatility, almost irritating for those who believe every athlete should live locked inside a single label; he comes off a major international breakthrough after his individual world bronze in short trail and team gold. Merillas, an old mountain fox, arrives with the authority of the Canfranc world silver and a career that doesn’t need fireworks. Torrella, at 22, has already won national senior titles in trail, mountain and vertical climbing. García, meanwhile, brings craft, a strong résumé and a long relationship with mountain races.

The men’s Uphill also smells like opportunity. Spain lines up Jonatan Arobes, Manuel Merillas, Alain Santamaría and Jan Torrella. Santamaría doubles up after being crowned Spanish vertical climbing champion; Arobes arrives as a competitive specialist on steep terrain; Merillas and Torrella offer two different profiles, but equally dangerous: one through experience and race reading, the other through competitive audacity. That audacity that is sometimes recklessness and sometimes a medal. We’ll see.

In the women’s category, the long race will feature Inés Astrain, María La Chica, María Martínez and Ikram Rharsalla. Rharsalla arrives as a benchmark after her eighth-place individual finish and team silver in the Short Trail at the Canfranc-Pirineos World Championships, as well as her team gold in the half marathon at the European road championships. Astrain adds long-distance experience, while María Martínez and María La Chica appear as debutants with room to deliver one of those joys that later get told as if everyone saw it coming.

The absence of Sara Alonso changes the picture in the women’s mountain events. The RFEA notes in its preview that the Up & Down team is affected by that absence, with Claudia Corral, María Fuentes and the alternatives named in the final preselection list. In Uphill, the women’s squad includes Claudia Corral, Laura Figueiredo, María Fuentes and Ana Hernández, two of them very recent on the national stage and with that uncomfortable edge for rivals: they arrive without a huge backpack of expectations, but with fresh legs and hunger.

The favorites: Europe brings long knives

The international field is not exactly coming for a sightseeing trip. In the men’s race, the European Championship brings names like Cesare Maestri, Stian Angermund, Frédéric Tranchand, Roberto Delorenzi, Dominik Rolli and Jonas Soldini, with Italy, Norway, France and Switzerland fielding extremely strong squads. Maestri is a guarantee in classic mountain racing; Angermund is one of those runners capable of turning a technical race into a breathless chase; Tranchand has French craft, which in trail usually means something serious; and Switzerland arrives with a school that seems built in an alpine laboratory, but with real mud under the nails.

In the women’s race, the spotlight falls on Tove Alexandersson, surely one of the most fascinating endurance athletes in Europe for her mix of orienteering, trail and an almost surgical competitive ability. Also in the mix are Scout Adkin, Maude Mathys, Judith Wyder, Clémentine Geoffray and Sarah McCormack, names that explain why this European Championship could be tougher than some world championships from other eras. There is depth, there are different styles and there are runners who don’t need the course to be kind in order to put on a show.

Spain does not arrive as a side act. Nor as owner of anything. It’s worth not falling into that small-drum sporting patriotism of ours, the one that turns every preview into a promise of gold and every fourth place into a national tragedy. The Spanish team has real chances of individual medals and, above all, of team podiums if its second and third runners hold their level. In national-team championships, glory doesn’t always come from the brightest athlete, but from the one who doesn’t drop off when the day goes sideways. That’s where team medals are won. In silence. Sometimes without a heroic photo.

The role of Merillas, Blanes, Torrella and Rharsalla

Manuel Merillas remains a central figure in understanding Spain’s chances. Not just because of his results, but because of what he brings in a race: knowledge of the terrain, patience and a running economy that is worth gold in the mountains. There are runners who seem to fight the climb; Merillas, when he’s on form, seems to argue with it quietly until he convinces it. His double presence, Uphill and Up & Down, opens up options, though it also brings an obvious demand: recovering between efforts in just 48 hours is not a formality, it’s a small physiological trial.

Andreu Blanes represents another profile. More hybrid, more modern, harder to pigeonhole. He comes from orienteering, has entered trail running with almost insulting naturalness and already knows what it is to win an individual world medal. In a technical Up & Down, with pace changes and the need to read lines, his background is not a footnote: it’s a tool. The mountain rewards not only the strongest climber, but also the one who chooses the best line when the trail breaks apart.

Jan Torrella is perhaps the most magnetic name for the reader looking for the future. He has the age of a prospect and the results of the present, which is the combination that usually gets a national team’s pulse racing. Senior national champion in several disciplines, under-20 medalist in his previous stage and already a senior international, he arrives in Slovenia as a hinge runner: he can learn, yes, but he can also do damage. A lot of it. In mountain sports, youth sometimes pays a toll in race management; other times, it simply skips it.

In the women’s race, Ikram Rharsalla appears as the most stable competitive point in the long event. Her 2025 placed her in a zone of international respect, and that matters. It doesn’t guarantee a medal, because trail running has a way of making guarantees look ridiculous with one badly placed stone or a bad stomach, but it does place her among the Spanish runners capable of holding a big race together. Around her, Spain needs Astrain, Martínez and La Chica to complete a solid block, without gaps. The team classification, once again, may depend less on the flash and more on consistency.

An event that measures more than legs

The European Championship in Slovenia arrives at an interesting moment for Spanish trail running. The Canfranc World Championships left self-belief, medals and a sense of belonging to the elite. But one thing is shining at home, with familiar surroundings, friendly logistics and the crowd on your side, and another is carrying that authority into a Central European alpine setting, with rivals who were almost born with elevation under the cradle. Slovenia will be a test of maturity. Not definitive, because in June nobody signs eternal verdicts, but revealing.

It will also be a test for the structure. The RFEA has been organizing a historically scattered ecosystem, where popular races, classic mountain running, long trail, federations, brands, private circuits and that inevitable air of independence that has always surrounded running in the mountains all coexisted. Organizing it without domesticating it is the challenge. Because trail running does need professionalization, yes, but it would lose something essential if it became just athletics with trees around it. The balance is delicate: federation oversight, clear criteria, athlete health, a sensible calendar and respect for a culture that was there before.

Sara Alonso’s absence, in that context, reminds us of an obvious truth that high-performance sport sometimes tries to hide under the rug: bodies are not machines with bib numbers. The team loses an important weapon, especially in the more explosive mountain events, but it also gains a chance to check the real depth of the women’s squad. Corral, Fuentes, Figueiredo, Hernández and company have an opportunity there that doesn’t usually come knocking twice. There are championships that crown favorites and others that create new names. Slovenia could be one of the latter.

The mountain will have the final word

Spain arrives at the trail European Championship in Slovenia with arguments, not smoke. It has experience, youth, recent medalists and a generation that is already competing head-to-head with Europe’s biggest powers. What it lacks, like everyone else, is passing through the Kamnik filter: an Uphill that doesn’t forgive soft legs, a 52-kilometer trail race where patience will matter as much as pace, and an Up & Down that can turn a descent into a sentence.

The championship will measure more than who runs the fastest. It will measure who thinks best when breathing gets rough, who eats before they’re hungry, who descends without fear but without foolishness, who accepts that the mountain does not negotiate with names. Spain has a team that can bite. Now comes the usual part: whether the terrain, the weather and the legs decide to tell a different version of the story.