Big's Backyard Ultra 2026: The World Team Championship, Explained

On Saturday, October 17, at 7:00 a.m. Central time, backyard runners in 68 countries start at the same moment: 8:00 a.m. in New York, 12:00 UTC and 2:00 p.m. in Brussels. Each country runs its own race on its own course, and the 2026 Backyard Ultra World Team Championship is decided by adding them all up. The American team runs where the format was invented, on Lazarus Lake's farm at Big's Backyard Ultra in Bell Buckle, Tennessee.

How does the World Team Championship work?

The backyard rules don't change: a 4.167-mile loop, started at the top of every hour, for as long as you can keep finishing it inside the hour. What changes is the scoring. Each national team has up to 15 runners, and in the organiser's words, a country's score is the combined number of yards completed by all its runners. Nothing is discarded, so the fifteenth runner's yards count exactly as much as the first's, and the country with the highest total is world champion.

That makes it a different race from the individual championship Big's hosts in odd years. A team can win without its best runner lasting longest, and a country with one superstar and a thin squad can lose to a country with fifteen good ones. Each satellite race still crowns its own national champion, and the top 50 of those earn places at the 2027 Individual World Championship.

The team championship runs in even years. Belgium won the first one in 2020, the United States won in 2022 with 860 yards, and Belgium won again in 2024.

What happened in 2024?

Belgium set the team record with 1,147 yards, ahead of Australia on 971 and the United States on 969. Its race ended without a winner. Merijn Geerts, Ivo Steyaert and Frank Gielen all reached 110 yards, about 458 miles, and finished level, so the Belgian race had no last one standing. Lazarus Lake wrote afterwards that the three chose to give up the chance to be declared champion and finish together.

The longest individual wins that weekend were elsewhere. Phil Gore won Australia's race with 96 yards, Kazuhiro Kawahata won Japan's with 92, and Scott Snell won the American race at Big's with 88. Megan Eckert ran 87 yards for the US team that day, two years before her 1,024-kilometre six-day run.

Who is running for the United States?

The US team is six Silver Ticket winners plus the top nine from the at-large list, and as of October 12 the official roster reads:

1. 1Harvey Lewis, 111 yards at the 2025 Individual World Championship
2. 2Jon Noll, 111 yards at the same race
3. 3Mark Dowdle, Silver Ticket, best of 94 yards
4. 4Scott Snell, 88 yards, the American winner in 2024
5. 5Greg Fall, 80 yards
6. 6Scott Martin, Silver Ticket, 78 yards
7. 7Megan Smyth, 77 yards
8. 8Jennifer Russo, 76 yards
9. 9Levi Yoder, 75 yards
10. 10Ron Wireman, 74 yards
11. 11Stephanie Rosebaugh, 67 yards
12. 12Nick Petterson, Silver Ticket, 65 yards
13. 13Ryan Snickles, Silver Ticket, 55 yards
14. 14Nicholas Steel, Silver Ticket, 53 yards
15. 15Jeff Walker, Silver Ticket, 49 yards

Dowdle's 94 yards are from August, when he won the Last Soul Ultra in Germany. Lewis and Noll both reached 111 yards at last year's individual championship on this same farm.

Who has to beat Belgium?

Belgium returns as defending champion with three of its 2024 runners: Ivo Steyaert, whose 113 yards at last year's individual championship are the best on its list, Merijn Geerts with 110 and Kenneth Vanthuyne with 100. Frank Gielen, the third of the 110-yard trio, is not on the 2026 roster.

Australia, second in 2024, is led on its list by Jonathan Ash with 100 yards and Dan Camac with 93. As of October 12, Phil Gore is not among the 21 names on Australia's list. Gore holds the best yardage in the sport, 119, and won last year's individual championship at Big's with 114.

Several other countries bring runners past 100 yards: New Zealand's Sam Harvey (118), Poland's Łukasz Wróbel (116), Japan's Kazuhiro Kawahata (106) and Germany's Hendrik Boury (100). But a team title is won by fifteen people, and in 2024 Belgium won it by 176 yards over the next country.

How do you follow it?

As of October 12, the organiser has not posted a 2026 live stream or results link. In 2025 the race streamed on the Backyard Ultra YouTube channel and posted live results on RaceResult. This post and the race page will carry the links once they are up, and the results as the yards add up.