Spiridon Clubs: before run clubs, the free spirit of running
Today, run clubs are flourishing in every major city: Saturday morning meetups, non-timed runs, coffee or beer after the effort. A phenomenon often presented as a recent trend, born from social media and a generation in search of connection. Yet, as early as the 1970s, Spiridon had already given birth to the exact same thing—only more militant, more pioneering, in a world where running differently was not a given.
A magazine that became a movement
In February 1972, two Swiss men, Noël Tamini and Yves Jeannotat, launched the magazine Spiridon. The idea was simple and a bit crazy: to create a running press that didn't just talk about records and championships. Spiridon championed a different vision of running—first and foremost a leisure activity, a practice of health, freedom, and conviviality. Karel Matejovsky created the graphic universe, that lively and popular style that would be the magazine's visual signature for seventeen years.
The magazine spoke to ordinary runners: the person running at 5 a.m. before work, the woman who wants to enter a race but doesn't have a license, the veteran whom the federations ignore, the beginner whom athletic clubs look at with condescension. In just a few issues, Spiridon became more than a magazine: it became a space for recognition, a dispersed community just waiting to find one another.
Why create Spiridon-Clubs?
Readers didn't just want to read Spiridon. They wanted to meet up, run together, and organize races open to everyone. At the height of the federal monopoly on athletics, many practices were excluded or ignored: off-track running, road running, mountain running, and trail running. Women and veterans regularly hit walls with regulations that kept them on the sidelines. Non-licensed runners could participate in almost no official races.
The Spiridon-Clubs were born from this need. Their role was twofold: to support the magazine and to embody the values it defended on the ground. Freedom, equality, conviviality, pleasure, simplicity. No elitism. No selection at the door. Everyone runs at their own pace, everyone is welcome.
The first clubs: a geography of free running
The first wave of Spiridon-Clubs emerged in the 1970s, first in Switzerland—logically, as that is where the magazine was born—then in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and as far as Quebec.
The Spiridon-Club of Switzerland was founded on March 24, 1975. Noël Tamini and Yves Jeannotat were the founders, alongside Michèle and Paul Miéville, Jean-Claude Pont, and Ingrid Bracco. Yves Jeannotat was its first president. This club would be the direct ancestor of Spiridon Romand, which succeeded it after 1991.
In France, several clubs emerged almost simultaneously. The Spiridon Club Languedoc was one of the very first, born at the beginning of 1975. The Spiridon Club d'Alsace saw the light of day in 1978—it would be at the origin of the Trophée des Vosges, launched in 1979, and the first editions of the Crêtes Vosgiennes. The same year, the Spiridon Côte d'Azur was created.
In the following years, the movement continued to expand. The Spiridon Club Dauphinois was born in 1981 around Grenoble, carrying the same values: leisure running, accessible competition, walking, and a convivial spirit. The Spiridon Club Aurillacois was founded in 1984 in Cantal. They adopted the motto of the first generation of Spiridonians and Jean-Claude Moulin, a motto that summarizes the spirit of a whole generation of clubs: "Performance is fine, but the party comes first."
A mantra that hasn't aged a day.
After the magazine, the spirit continues
In 1989, Spiridon came to an end. Seventeen years of issues, portraits of ordinary runners, and pleas for free running. The magazine stopped, but the clubs kept going.
Some survived without changing their soul. Others transformed. Others still would be born later, in reference to a spirit they knew through transmission—an issue found in a library, a founding parent, a race organized in the 1980s.
In France, there are active clubs in every corner of the country today: Spiridon Amical Limousin in Limoges, Amicale Spiridon 82 in Montauban around the Course du Muguet, Spiridon du Tarn, Spiridon Catalan, Spiridon Crèchois, Spiridon Club Aveyron, Spiridon Club du Pays Mellois, and Spiridon Périgord Pourpre. In Belgium, Spiridon Borinage and Entente Spiridon Monceau. In Germany, Spiridon Frankfurt, Spiridon-Club Bad Oldesloe, and Spiridon Club Oberlahn. In Luxembourg, Spiridon 08 Lëtzëuerg. In the Netherlands, Spiridon Nederland.
After the magazine ceased publication, several clubs continued to keep the Spiridon spirit alive locally, each in their own way. The current Spiridon brand is part of the continuity of the historical rights holders and the original graphic designs of Karel Matejovsky.
What the Spiridon-Clubs still say to today's runners
There is something unsettling about comparing the Spiridon-Clubs of the 1970s with today's run clubs. The post-run coffee, the flexible pace, the group open to all levels, running as a pretext for meeting people: the resemblance is striking.
But there is a difference. The Spiridon-Clubs carried a dimension that current run clubs no longer need to carry: resistance. They were built in a context where off-track running was frowned upon, where women were often excluded from official events, and where veterans had no place in the rankings. Being a member of a Spiridon-Club in the 1970s was sometimes a militant act.
Today, that battle is largely won. Women run everywhere, at all levels. Non-licensed runners participate in marathons. Off-track running has become one of the most practiced sports in the world. That is also, in part, thanks to them.
Spiridon was never just a magazine
Spiridon was a way of running and finding one another. An idea shared through thousands of issues, relayed on the ground by hundreds of runners who created their clubs, organized their races, and got their neighbors running without worrying about licenses.
The Spiridon-Clubs are one of the most beautiful proofs of this: before social media, before hashtags, before "instagrammable" run crews, there were people who met in a park or on a trail to run together, freely, because a magazine had told them it was possible.