One 4.1667-mile loop, run every hour on the hour, until only one competitor per venue can complete a lap that no one else there can match -- run simultaneously by every participating country's own 15-runner national team, each on its own physical course in its own country. A country's score is the sum of all 15 team members' completed laps; the team with the highest combined total is the World Team Champion. There is no single physical course: each country runs its own venue.
The 4.1667-mile (6.7056 km) loop length and the hourly rule are fixed by the general Backyard Ultra rules and identical at every venue. Everything else about the physical course -- terrain, elevation, surface, exact start location, local start clock time -- is set independently by each of the roughly 73 national organizing teams and is not published in any one place; this record cannot and does not claim a single elevation, surface_breakdown or terrain figure for a course that physically exists in dozens of different countries at once. Universal format rules that DO apply everywhere: no artificial aids including trekking poles; no non-competitors on the course including eliminated runners; common aid stations (shared, not personal) are allowed. Team scoring: a country's total is the sum of all 15 scoring team members' individual completed-lap counts (derived by matching Belgium's 15 individually listed 2024 results, which sum to exactly the 1,147-yard team total the org's own site announced), not the top performer alone -- confirmed in the race director's own words, 'every team member is important; 1-15.'
The World Team Championship of the backyard ultra format: the same 4.1667-mile hourly loop as every backyard ultra, run simultaneously by dozens of national teams around the world, each of up to 15 runners, on the same day. A country's result is the sum of every one of its team members' completed hourly loops, not any single runner's own distance, and the team with the highest combined total wins. This alternates, year on year, with an Individual World Championship held at a single site in Bell Buckle, Tennessee (filed separately as bigs-backyard-ultra).
First held in 2020, when COVID-19 travel restrictions replaced the single Tennessee race with simultaneous satellite national championships; Belgium won that inaugural Team Championship, with the USA second and Mexico third. Team USA won the 2022 edition, during which Belgium's Merijn Geerts and Ivo Steyaert set a new individual world record of 101 laps without continuing to a 102nd. In 2024, Belgium's team set a new team record of 1,147 combined yards (its 15 runners' individual lap totals summed), with Merijn Geerts, Ivo Steyaert and Frank Gielen each completing 110 laps (458.33 miles / 737.62 km) to tie a new individual world's-best mark; every one of Belgium's 15 runners completed at least 50 laps. The championship alternates each year with an Individual World Championship held at the format's original site near Bell Buckle, Tennessee.
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