By Sachit Subba • Off-Field • Jul 26, 2026 15:44 PM • 94 views
Sunmaya Budha crossed the finish line in the Italian Dolomites in 13 hours, 33 minutes and 18 seconds, tearing up a 13-year course record at the La Sportiva Lavaredo Ultra Trail, a 120-kilometre race in the UTMB circuit — one of the most prestigious in world ultra-running. She beat some of the sport's biggest names. Back home, the reception was a few friends, some well-wishers, and a handful of banners. No government ceremony. No official honour. Nothing.
That gap is the story. Budha's win sits among the most significant results any Nepali athlete has produced on foreign soil. Yet it triggered no response from the state, reigniting a question Nepali trail runners have asked for years: why does a sport that keeps putting the country on the world map get nothing back from it?
This wasn't a one-off. Over the past year alone, Budha has picked up titles in Hong Kong, China and South Africa, and she's the first Asian woman to medal at the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships. All of it — training, travel, entry into international fields, sponsorship — has run through private backers and personal athlete management. The federation and the state have stayed on the sidelines. Her sister, Ramamaya Budha, added to the family's résumé with a podium finish in China, further proof that Nepal keeps producing world-class distance runners with essentially no institutional support behind them.
Budha isn't running this lonely trail alone, either. Mira Rai, Rashila Tamang, Priya Rai and Arjun Kulung Rai have all built international reputations in the same discipline, part of a wave of Nepali ultra-runners who've quietly rewritten what the country is capable of on the world stage. It was Rai's string of victories abroad roughly a decade ago that first put trail running on Nepal's sporting radar — and since then, Tamang, the two Rais and now Budha have kept adding to that history. The pattern has stayed consistent throughout: the wins keep coming, the state keeps looking away.
The latest evidence: a government payout of roughly NPR 10.5 crore (105 million) to 101 athletes, coaches and officials under the National Sports Development regulation, covering cricket, kho-kho, taekwondo, bodybuilding, motorsport, gymnastics, belt wrestling and beach kabaddi. Course-record holders, two-time Asian champions, world championship medalists in trail running — none appeared on that list.
Experts in the sport point out the irony: Nepal's Himalayan trails, biodiversity and terrain make it one of the best trail-running destinations on the planet, a natural advantage almost no other country can match. In a joint statement, the country's ultra and trail athletes laid out what they actually want — timely visa and administrative help for competing abroad, financial backing for international travel, access to coaching and sports science and medical support, a competent and accountable national federation, and the same government recognition and incentives that medalists in other sports already receive. None of it, they argue, requires new stadiums or major infrastructure—just political will and a policy that follows through.
The ball is now in the new government's court. Athletes who keep raising Nepal's flag on foreign soil shouldn't have to go looking for recognition when they get home. What happens next — in policy, in budget, in practice — will show how seriously the state values their contribution.
