Operational Experience of Ultra Trail Marathon: Sympoietic Perspective of the Course Clearance, Search and Rescue Team
Abstract
Purpose: The aim of this study is to examine the operational experiences of the "Course Clearance, Search, and Rescue Team" “C-SAR-T” that served at the “Kaçkar By UTMB” ultra-trail marathon held in Turkey in 2025, within the framework of the concept of sympoietic (co-production). within the framework of the concept of sympoiesis (co-production)
Method: The study was designed as a qualitative case study within the interpretive paradigm. The analysis examined how task coordination is established, maintained, or disrupted within a heterogeneous network comprising human and non-human actors, drawing on the concept of autopoietic systems. Data were collected from 23 participants (7 women, 16 men, age range 19–37 years) using an asynchronous, semi-structured written interview protocol consisting of 11 open-ended questions. The data were analyzed using six-step thematic analysis method.
Results: The analysis revealed five main themes: interdisciplinary co-learning; the infrastructural fragility of communication; improvisation with distributed actors; collective mind, trust, and real-time decision-making; lack of preparedness and the demand for recognition. The findings show that rescue performance emerged not primarily from individual expertise, but from real-time coordination among different actors such as teams, volunteers, local residents, and civilian resources; they indicate that infrastructural disruptions such as radio failures and language barriers forced co-production to rely on improvisation.
Conclusion: Rescue operations in ultra-trail events are sympoietic processes where performance is a "becoming-with" involving both human and non-human actors. The study recommends multi-stage training and the formal integration of distributed resources into high-reliability organizational frameworks to move from reactive improvisation to planned reliability.
Keywords
References
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Details
Primary Language
English
Subjects
Sports and Recreation
Journal Section
Research Article
Publication Date
September 18, 2026
Submission Date
July 11, 2026
Acceptance Date
September 18, 2026
Published in Issue
Year 2026 Volume: 9 Number: 2026