La Sportiva launches the storytelling campaign dedicated to the personal challenges of athletes and ordinary people, protagonist of the first chapter is the ultra-runner Michele Graglia.
There are challenges that go beyond the opponent, the goal, the summit, the time to beat.
Challenges that are based on our deepest motivations, that lead us to undertake intense training sessions, to face our fears, to strive to know and overcome our limits.
Those who run, climb, ski, hike or practice any kind of outdoor activity just to feel good, constantly face their own personal challenge, their own mountain to climb. The perimetre of play is defined by our heart, by our emotions, by our ambitions.
It is around this concept that La Sportiva has developed the claim “For your mountain”, wherever it may be and whatever shape it may have. An identity message in line with what the company from Val di Fiemme, Trentino, can offer mountain enthusiasts today: technical footwear and clothing to help them face their outdoor challenge.
If it can be said that all outdoor sporting activities bring with them fascinating but apparently, impossible challenges, ultra running is perhaps, the sport that represents one of the most challenging and fascinating disciplines of all, with hundreds of thousands of participants ready to challenge themselves and their opponents, over distances of more than 100 km.
The protagonist of the first chapter of the “La Sportiva For your Mountain” campaign is the ultra runner Michele Graglia: a symbol of “self motivation” and a great example of a resilient athlete who finds his motivations in the constant search for a deeper meaning of things in general and the quest to find his own personal identity.
After a career as a top model working between Los Angeles and New York, Michele, of Ligurian origins, chose to abandon the spotlight in search of a deeper meaning of things and he took up running.
Ultra distance races are often physically impossible to prepare for and only those with a well-trained mind can meet the challenge, which takes the form of an inner dialogue similar to meditation and that demands the deepest motivation from both athlete and man.
A few after taking up racing, the biographical book, “Ultra. Freedom beyond all Limits” written by Folco Terzani, reveals that Michele went on to win many of the challenges he had posed at the beginning of his journey: in 2016 he won the Yukon Artic 100 miles race in the frost and solitude of the Canadian winter, in 2018 he was the first Italian ever to cross the finishing line in first place, at the Badwater Marathon in the United States, a 217km ultra marathon considered by enthusiasts to be the hardest inthe world and then again in October 2019 he entered the Guinness book of records by being the first man to cross the Gobi Desert in southern Mongolia, the 1703 km “windy desert” in a record time of 23 days, 8 hours and 46 minutes.
And Michele Graglia’s story has just begun: his goal for the next few years is to cross all the well known deserts where the horizon appears flat and infinite, where the mountains to climb are the inner ones and have to do with personal motivation and the search for oneself in the midst of unspoilt nature.
La Sportiva narrates all this through the “Mountains Within” video campaign, a 13 minute motivational documentary that you can watch here on youtube:
And what about the next chapters of For Your Mountain? There will be an all female version with Egyptian climber Amer Wafaa, the new face in sports climbing and the famous mountaineer Tamara Lunger.
And which is your mountain? Tell us about it with the hashtag #foryourmountain.
INFO: La Sportiva
