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An incredibly insightful conversation with a race director who’s done and seen it all. From 2-person operations to managing teams of over 200 people, single-day events, and multi-day events, from hosting just a handful of people all the way to marathons with 10s of thousands of participants. Mark Turner is the founder and director of UtraSwim 33.3, which is swim’s answer to multi-day off-road ultra running events. In this conversation, he is sharing how he’s managed to consistently deliver successful and sustainable events for decades, using emotion as his secret weapon. Mark’s passion for creating unforgettable experiences for his participants was so inspiring that I signed up for the next edition of UltraSwim 33.3 immediately. This should not be missed by any event organiser or professional in mass participation sports.

Alexander Tanti: Mark, fantastic to have you as part of the series. I’d love to hear about your background and how you came about starting to organise races.

Mark Turner: On the events side, I started in the early 2000s. Before that, I was actually managing athletes with a young sailor called Ellen MacArthur, who became a quite famous single-handed sailor. We were partners and managed her sailing career, and ran some sailing projects that eventually also introduced us to the topic of raising money for managing events. And then after, I guess six, seven years, we moved from just doing athletes to starting creating events or taking over existing events that were in trouble.

The first instance, actually, was a historic sailing race across the Atlantic Ocean that was about to disappear, which we renamed The Transat. We picked that up, as has happened a few times in my sports business career, for a dollar or a single euro, but with huge risk, as it was just a few months before it was meant to take place, with very little in place. It happens a lot, unfortunately, especially with events managed by volunteers that grow fantastically, get bigger and bigger, then start depending on sponsorship and then the sponsor pulls out. And the structure behind it is unable to absorb the shock. And in this case, in 2004, we picked up a transatlantic race from the UK to the US.

That got us going from just managing athletes and projects into managing events. We started creating other sailing events worldwide, and I think by the time I stopped working on it, we were in 23 countries. It was 2010 when Ellen MacArthur and I went different ways. She went up to start a project called the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which is in a whole different sphere and stopped sailing herself. I bought her out of our company, OC Sport, and gave that half of the company to a young guy called Remi Duchemin. He was a young and up-and-coming star at ASO (Amaury Sport Organisation — Tour de France, Dakar Rally etc.) but left ASO to join me. And with him came a huge amount of input in the outdoor event space. That took us quite quickly into owning the Geneva Marathon. It was a similar case where the marathon had got bigger and bigger, and then the title sponsor pulled out just four months before, and we stepped in and bought it for one franc. We managed to pull it off, and that got us our first outdoor event which is now a very successful Marathon Festival, with 20–25,000 people or something this year, if I”m not mistaken.

So that happened quite often along the way, and then we quickly also started developing cycling. We created the Haute Route, which is a multi-day cycling race in the Alps initially, that was recently actually sold to Ironman. Developing the Haute Route was a crazy experience. I mean, super crazy. There aren’t many events today in any sport that follow that format and for a good reason. They’re twice as complicated, not just because they take place over however many days, but because everything’s more complex. But this really appeals to me as a format because of the emotion that gets created. Everybody in the family gets involved, people suffer but also enjoy themselves, they get challenged but also get rewarded, and that just builds into an overall incredible experience. One-day events also offer an element of that but not to the same extent because you don’t get the same bonds created between participants as in the multi-day experience, which is tough sporting, life and organization-wise.

Alexander Tanti: And is it true that you actually competed among your participants in some of those early Haute Route events?

Mark Turner: That’s true! In the initial days of those events, I was actually out there riding them as well. Being part of the organization, I knew that you need to be on the inside of the pain and suffering to really understand the competitors’ needs or priorities.

I’ve always tried to keep that mentality in different events I have been involved in, as I genuinely believe you need someone in the senior team of the organization actually competing and doing it. Often, what you think is important as an organizer, viewing it from the side of the car or the finish line, is completely different to what’s in the head of the competitor who’s on a bike or in the water. Understanding what goes through their head in that exhausted state. Their priorities are often very, very different to what you think they are.

The first briefings I actually wrote right after getting off the bike to present to 300 riders an hour later. I was still in lycra when on stage, explaining the route and what to look out for.

Alexander Tanti: Interestingly, in one of the interviews a few weeks ago, one of the pieces of advice that I got from the organizer was to never do your own race unless you’re really prepared and rested. Especially in the run-up to the event, you’re probably exhausted by so many elements, and the morning of the event, you’re supposedly up very, very early in the morning. How were you able to actually ride the event? Knowing the Haute Route, it’s not like a 5K, 30-minute race. It’s one of the most brutal events out there!. You know,…

Mark Turner: I had a great team, and I was not part of the dedicated operations group on the ground. But nonetheless, in the beginning, everything was fairly raw. We didn’t have that much experience, especially in this format. The bit that we wanted to make a difference in, which most events need to make a difference in, is how close to your competitors you are and how well you understand what’s really important for them. Multi-day events are very different because of the added logistical details like the timing of getting your bag to the hotel, serving food, limited recovery time etc.

And because you’re in a multi-day event, you’ve got to factor in the intervals between races and the recovery. With UltraSwim, it’s a bit different, as you have a bit more time between stages. But with cycling events, the last person would come in after riding for 10 hours. They need to get off the bike, get sorted, get some food, get to the hotel, get some kind of recovery, and get to bed. The next day, get up again at five or six to do it all over again. So super compressed for time. Every tiny detail becomes important, even waiting for your bag 10 minutes longer than you wanted to could become a major stress factor. So that’s why being on the inside was good. Even down to what you eat, and the food stops. It’s easy to have a plan about what you think people want. But actually, if you got someone in the organization participating, then, you know that there was not enough savoury food left at the top of the final col as you’re also craving for it rather than only sugary stuff. That’s just the tiny details that can make or break the reputation of an event.

Alexander Tanti: What you said about actually feeling and experiencing first-hand what a participant is going through is very, very important. That experience can suddenly give you a different direction as to what you need to offer, to who and when.

Mark Turner: I think that obviously, you can get feedback through surveys post-event, but if you have someone that’s senior in your own organization out there competing, then when they see something that’s happening, they’re able to communicate it and that goes straight to the top of those in command. You can make a change during the event itself, and you’re able to resolve those things right there and then, or at least make it a priority for the next day. Surveys are great, but they’re post-event. People also forget some of the details that were important, especially if they had a great day; they are more likely to forget tiny details that they would have made incremental improvements.

Alexander Tanti: Indeed. We may need to come up with live racecheck reviews during the event!!

Mark Turner: It’s important to get quick hot feedback at the time that people feel it rather than through a hazy view post-event. There are so many tiny details that even as the organizer, you’re not going to know. But I think what you’re measuring with racecheck post-event is useful because you force the participant to think of many different aspects of the event and, as a result, get a lot more detail. But still. It’s mostly the big things that you remember. The devil is in the detail, and that’s what’s so hard about events. Usually, organisers get the big picture right. Things like the concept, the crisis management side of things etc., but there are so many more details that all add up to build a great experience.

Alexander Tanti: How did you come up with the multi-day format? And why did you think that would eventually be a success?

Mark Turner: For me, it’s all about generating emotion and facilitating an event that gets people to experience different levels of emotion. The thing about multi-day is it creates a whole different level of bonding and connections between people, which ultimately comes from suffering together over multiple days. It creates bonds for life. What usually happens in one-day events is people generally arrive a few hours before the race, they might meet a few people at breakfast or whatever, take part, and then they’ll usually depart quite quickly afterwards. In multi-day events, you just meet lots of different people over longer periods of time. You meet the people you’re on the racecourse with. The people at the front, the back, and everywhere in between. And that diversity is what makes it special I think. On day one, like in most multi-day events, most people go out too hard and then on day two, the brain tells the body, “Okay. You gotta turn this down a bit”, so everyone’s feeling sluggish and rough. “How the hell am I going to do this?” Usually, by day three, people start to get stronger. The emotions that are created on that rollercoaster of perceived effort and tiredness, then the rejoice of feeling good again, you know, that’s where the energy comes from. It’s an interesting journey. Multi-day events are more likely to help generate life-changing experiences.

Alexander Tanti: Was that something you felt was missing from the large-scale marathons you were involved with before?

Mark Turner: Yeah, I think the big difference from a one-day event where someone runs for three hours or even an ultra trail where someone’s running for 24 hours or 36 hours is the incredible bonds that can happen in multi-day events. They get to meet each other the first day, and then they have the next day and then the next etc. So I think there’s a reason why they’re not lots of multi-day events happening because they are much harder to organize, but actually, they’re just the way that you really create huge value for people.

Alexander Tanti: Do you deliberately design the event to promote bonding between people? Do you get them to start in certain groups and create situations where they can mingle etc., or would you say it’s more natural?

Mark Turner: Natural, I’d say, but I think you also need to think about a format that keeps people together for as much time as possible. With the UltraSwim 33.3 format, we did a first test event last year, where we really tried not to have the faster swimmers disappear, off recovering in the hotel while others are still out in the water. We are trying to keep people of different abilities together in the same space, on the boat, and at the finish line. That’s very hard to do on something like a marathon with the fastest runners finishing, and then they’re gone. It’s a super interesting challenge how you create moments that bring all those people together.

As an event organizer, you need to act as a facilitator, creating a platform for people to have a great experience that inspires them or helps them to gain confidence. Another fundamental ingredient is injecting a bit of fear and worry into the mix. There has to be some discomfort created in the months before when you’re thinking of the event that’s coming, and you’re starting to get a bit apprehensive about it. If you get that, it means you’ve got the right formula, and as a participant, you’ve entered the right event because you wake up uncomfortable about what’s coming later in the year or day.

You’ve entered an event where you train for a bit more than you might have done, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re at the front or the back. You just got to experience discomfort because that discomfort then turns into nerves, which turns into a reward and a great buzz. It’s a great feeling when people normally go home as better people in their heads.

And that’s what sport is so good at. And that’s why Multi-Day events are so special. They multiply the impact,…

Alexander Tanti: From sailing to running, to cycling, from one-day events to multi-day events in 23 different countries to now the Ultra Swim… A lot of this goes against conventional advice in terms of picking a niche and becoming really, really good at it. Most of the time, that means picking a location or a sport. How do you jump from sport to sport to different formats and countries while still delivering amazing events?

Mark Turner: It’s been great to have experience in different sports. I’m not an expert in any of them, and sailing is probably the one where I’ve spent the longest, but so much of it carries across between sports. We were just talking about the importance of generating emotion. Having this as a goal across all the different event types while having the right experts in the team makes it easier to replicate regardless of sport type and format. You do need specialist knowledge, of course, but we’ve always managed to find that specialist knowledge.

I’ve always enjoyed taking our business into new sports, but each time you’re looking for an expert to help you. I know lots of people that have been in the same sport for 40 years, and, you know, everyone knows them, and they know everyone, and it’s great, but I think you also can get a little bit stale. So for me, I enjoy the challenge, you know?

I’ve had as many failures as successes along the way, but I enjoy the challenge of entering a new sector and then trying to understand the ecosystem. So I’m enjoying that with swimming right now.

Swimming is a sport that I always did when I was younger and got back into it in 2015 and started doing longer-distance swimming, which I had never done before. As a teenager, 200 meters was as long as I’d go. So I did a 5K swim in New Zealand, north of Auckland and my God, it was incredible, and that took me back to the sport after a 25-year break in reality — albeit in open water this time.. I think interest and energy are now building in open water swimming, so I think the timing is good. Open-water swimming is really growing. It’s a niche without question, a niche within a niche even, but it’s growing very fast. As a sport, it’s probably the healthiest of everything and more and more research points to that — both physical and mental health. There is something special about the water.. It’s a small sport with lots of super passionate people, lots of tradition, some good, some not so good perhaps, but it’s very accessible. You don’t need a lot of money to try or take part in it.

And as an organiser, it’s nice to go into a new sport and format, try to understand the nuances of it, and then try and see if you can prove it works and help develop it. Coming from the other side, you take some best practices with you from one sport and see what applies. You then learn what you need to learn about the differences, and then you’re normally like, “Okay, what can we change completely? What could we do that is really different”. and…

Alexander Tanti: From the sounds of it, you’re a specialist in creating emotion during the event and anticipation ahead of the event. Your speciality is in facilitating bonds between people and then looking to kind of replicate that regardless of the field of play, whereas in the nitty-gritty stuff, you rely on experts to help you out.

Mark Turner: Yeah, and, you know, with UltraSwim 33.3, I have a small team, so I’m back in the detail, which I haven’t been in for a long time. With my first company, we grew to over 120 people. And then, when I ran the Volvo Ocean Race, a sailing race around the world, I had up to 200 people in that team. It had a corporate aspect to it in terms of reporting to the owners as CEO. So it’s been a long time since I returned with a really tiny team and not many resources, but that’s been super interesting. When you don’t have big resources you are also forced to make better decisions sometimes too. In the last few years, a lot of things have changed, a lot of tools have changed, marketing has gone all digital, and I’m not an expert in any way in any of that, so I’ve always had to rely on a strong team around me. Whether it’s a project management specialist, on the operations side, or on the communication side, you need that knowledge. It’s quite refreshing to start over in a new sport but to do that you need to be comfortable asking the stupid question at the beginning and genuinely not care what others think, but also be humble enough to listen to others’ expertise.

You need to be able to look at all aspects of an event and keep asking, “Why”. “Why are we doing it like that” “Could we do that differently?” or “yes traditionally we do that, but….”

There are many competing variables when organising an event, and you’ve got to judge what the right mix is. And that’s what I enjoy doing, looking at the event as a whole concept and of course, the commercial side of it. You have to run a good business to create a great product. It’s tough to start an event and get it to the point where it pays for itself or becomes profitable very quickly because you’re always investing. It’s super interesting to look at each sport and see what the different business models are, and then try and build a new or better model.

I’ve always been most interested in niche products where there’s an element of premium, where you can sell a higher value proposition, as well as keeping it accessible.

That’s why I’m now interested in swimming. I’ve obviously seen cycling and triathlon premium value propositions evolve and massively transform over the past 30 years, but swimming’s just at the beginning of something like that. I don’t know how big it’ll get nor how far that it will go. But I think that’s super interesting because if you can grow the top of the pyramid in terms of what people are willing to pay to go and do an event, then you can make a better event. It doesn’t mean it’s less comfortable, doesn’t need to be less accessible, but it allows you to grow a bigger and better event. If you’re only doing pure numbers with maximum numbers on the start line, that’s a different model, and you have to have very big numbers.

Each sport has the same constraints in some ways. But what I think is probably more complicated nowadays, compared to 20 years ago, is accessing specific pockets of communities, despite all the available digital tools.

Alexander Tanti: What I think is special about open water swimming is that it’s perhaps one of the last frontiers in sport that are less susceptible to distraction during the activity. There’s less time to look at your watch, or your heart rate, or to be distracted by data and music. It facilitates such an incredible environment of pure tranquility and pure quiet. Just you and your thoughts, directly connected to nature

I think that a trend has been building in that direction in the past decade for sure. People are looking for experiences, rather than a PB. and going after real experiences and emotional experiences and connecting with other people rather than chasing PBs. I think that was more, you know, 2008 to 2015. But since then, people really, really seem to be looking for experiences.

Mark Turner: There are more and more research projects that indicate that something unique happens to people in the water. Without gravity, completely neutralized, and the sound of water.

There isn’t any doubt about the mental health benefits of it and with some of the longer events, you are able to completely zone out, like a form of meditation. I had a period of family loss in 2015, and I was going through a lot, so I started doing mindfulness on an app, and I realised, you know, “that’s exactly how it feels when I swim, and it’s much better that way because I’m also active. I’m training at the same time and being physical and can go on autopilot as I don’t have to be conscious of the road. You can just disappear into this space, a small part of the brain only checking your direction if in open water, and there’s something super powerful about it, and I think more people are discovering that. And again, you can retain the competitive element if you like.

So yeah, I think there’s something really special about this sport, and I think it’s gonna continue to explode as more people are coming from other sports. There’s a certain intensity required in triathlon, but that comes at the cost of the family and multi-sport training and the time commitment etc.

Swimming is extraordinary from a physical point of view. It’s a full-body workout. And you don’t need to do a three-hour swim to get a good training session in. And you don’t need much equipment. And no impact loads on tired knees…

Alexander Tanti: We briefly spoke about business models. How would you advise organisers from being overly reliant on a single sponsor? Are there any good insights you’ve gathered from all these years to protect your event and ensure longevity?

Mark Turner: The first thing to ask is, what is the structure behind it? Many events start as an association of volunteers. It then starts to get more serious but through passion, and everyone volunteering, your cost structure remains low. So, I suppose the first bit of advice would be to the people that are developing a new event, is to ensure that the right structure is in place. Regardless of whether you operate as a group of volunteers or a commercial business, you still need to build reserves.

Perhaps, you could be charging that little bit more so that you are able to put some money in the bank and foresee the moment that the sponsorship might not come through for some reason. By treating your event as a professional business, you might build more of a contingency to be able to absorb the shock of losing a major sponsor or venue pulling out or something else. That’s just the nature of things, and it will happen sooner or later to everyone, but it’s hard to do in not-for-profit cultured organisations. Organisers are usually split between those that are just doing it on an absolute minimum set-up, but that’s not necessarily a good thing for the stakeholders or your community of participants because when it does fall apart, then you’ve let everyone down.

So, the argument that, well, no, we’re not a business because we’re not trying to make a profit, well, maybe you should be trying to put some reserves in the bank because otherwise, you’re gonna let your community down. The time will come when you’re going to lose a sponsor, even the most loyal; sometimes, the person at the top will change and its game over.

Even if you’re in a non-profit organisation, I think it is fundamental. I co-founded a charity in Switzerland that takes young people in remission from cancer on sailing trips (www.lemanhope.ch). And from day one, I decided to run it like a business. It’s a charity, but we run it like a business. When trying to attract donations, we approached companies with a business proposition, and they responded to that. And that’s the right way. It’s the right way to do it. And I think that approach again applies in the same way, as much as possible to volunteer organisations and association sport businesses.

When you treat it as a business and set it up as a business, you need to be aware that there are significant risks and that you’ve got to have the ability to cushion any blows and be there for the long term. Being around for the long term allows you to build a consistent and trustworthy reputation. Sometimes something happens in the run-up to an event where you think that it would have been far more sensible to cancel it, but I’ve never wanted to do that unless there’s absolutely no other way. Reputation is everything, and Racecheck is one of the tools to help us build it and showcase it, because, ultimately, a long-term reputation comes through being delivering consistent quality events and making consistent decisions. This creates loyal customers and stakeholders that have been with me from the beginning. My ability to do that would have been limited without making sure to build reserves, and make sure I run my events as a business.

Alexander Tanti: Regarding reserves and cash flow, there’s an increasing trend lately that most registrations come in last minute. That obviously applies pressure in the business as you always need to pay for things beforehand. How do you protect against that?

Mark Turner: We’ve gone through a few different trends in the last three years. I think last year, especially in Europe, there was a big decrease in numbers in mass participation events because people didn’t want to make early decisions for obvious reasons like covid, and that was very tricky. At the back end of the covid chapter, and that was very, very tricky. There will always be people that will plan really early and people that plan really late, but so many planned late and then realised they weren’t prepared for doing the event so didn’t! Although now the dial seems to be swinging back the other way. I think that people are again ready to take risks and make long-term commitments to events. But yeah, since Covid, many more people will just leave it to the last minute.

I don’t have any magic answers for it. Still, in general, multi-day or long-distance endurance events will force an earlier decision, as people don’t generally decide last minute to do a marathon or a half-ironman, as they need to commit and they need the time to train for it. So adding longer distance events in your portfolio may be a good way to attract earlier registrations and the cash flow that will cushion some of the cash requirements for your shorter events as well.

Alexander Tanti: Another thing that I found very interesting is that when starting a company or starting a new event, it seems to me that one of your strengths is your ability to outsource the right roles to the right people. I think that’s a huge strength. How do you go about creating a winning team each time?

Mark Turner: For me, number one is character. Not necessarily experience or a CV. Events are super high-pressure, they’re tiring and require long hours. Who do you know is fit for purpose? It’s the kind of people that are ready to give, and they’re not counting the hours. It’s definitely about the character rather than the competence. Because I think a lot of competencies and knowledge can be shared. But after that, delivering an event is about having people that are open-minded and flexible and ready to jump into those roles and fill the gaps when necessary. It’s people that are genuinely inspired by seeing what the participants do.

It’s not a normal job working in an event, and I see lots of volunteers at every event. Very few events can take place without them. It’s so interesting that volunteers are often there because they just get a buzz from seeing the participants push themselves and be rewarded at the finish line. Character, above all else, is shared across different languages and cultures. I think we were up to 23 countries where we had events in 2015/16 with OC sport and working with different people in different cultures. It can be pretty challenging, but still, within each culture, you can pick the right character and the right values and why someone is there.

Alexander Tanti: But how can you understand whether someone has the character and value required?

Mark Turner: I think ideally, every interview would be on the back of a bike while climbing the third col of the day. Seeing how people handle discomfort. For sailing projects, we used to go to the mountains and just put people in different environments and push really hard and just see how they react. You know, are they taking charge? Are they helping the people in the back?

Of course, you can’t do that all of the time. But you can read from people’s CVs what they’ve done in their life. If they’ve tried different sports and experiences, that’s usually a pretty good indication that they’re open-minded and ready to do different things. There’s no right or easy answer, but these are some of the tools I use.

Alexander Tanti: That’s really interesting. So someone organising a local 10k could gather a bunch of candidates and organise a one-day group activity somewhere in nature and see how they deal with unexpected stuff.

Mark Turner: Of course, you do not want to make it tough on the person who may be less fit, but actually just something that pushes people a little bit. That way, you see their real characters.

Alexander Tanti: How do you find volunteers in all these different locations?

Mark Turner: Yeah, it’s interesting.

Mark Turner: Again, there are obviously different cultures in different places. But people aren’t looking for that much, you know. They’re looking to be valued for their contribution.. That’s what they’re really looking for. An opportunity to feel like they’re contributing, and then they clearly get something back from receiving gratitude from the participants. But the massive key part is running it as a program. I’m not an expert in any way, but I know that in different countries, you have to approach it differently because in some countries, the concept of volunteering is not really there. So it’s definitely venue by venue.

You can try to find local clubs and contribute to those clubs in some way, but the bottom line is that you must present your event as something really inspirational. I think this is the best way to find people who want to get involved, whether that’s young people who want to get some experience or older people who have a bit more time on their hands.

There’s never a shortage of volunteers, but it’s not always obvious how to find them.

Alexander Tanti: If there’s one piece of advice you would give to anybody looking to start in the industry, what would that be?

Mark Turner: If you’re starting out, I think you shouldn’t go and start something new unless you are super, super passionate and clear about the outcome you’re looking for. It doesn’t mean that you love that sport or that it’s your sport. Sometimes it’s good to stay away from the sport you love because you end up not doing them very much after you start organising them! This is probably the number one piece of advice. Don’t go into a sport because it’s your sport and the one you’re most passionate about, thinking that you will manage to keep doing it as much as you did before because you won’t.

Also, I think you can’t go into event organisation without a lot of passion and energy. It’s not easy, and you will have to jump over barrier after barrier. You’re unlikely to make a fortune from it financially, but you can definitely make a lot of emotional profit, let’s call it…Approaching it with the right passion and energy will make you feel good about what you’re doing in your life as you genuinely transform people’s lives. There’s always someone for whom that was the turning point in their life, and you gave that to them. That’s incredibly gratifying. And running it as a business allows you to stay in it for longer and inspire even more people.

Alexander Tanti: Thanks so much, Mark — Brilliant chat.

You can connect with Mark on Strava, and Instagram @markturner888. You can also visit the UltraSwim 33.3 Facebook page here.