“We lived four seasons in two days”. After 46 hours and 30 minutes of racing, one of the last runners of the UTMB to cross the arrival arch in Chamonix sums up its odyssey around Mont Blanc with a smile that erases all its grin of pain, while the knees grine and the sore muscles are thrilled with each stride. To welcome the anonymous classification backgrounds, the ten best women and the ten best men had formed a hedge of honor this Sunday, making these trailers amateur the applause they had received the day before.
Above them watched over a sparkling white mountain, finally rid of the clouds and dressed in a new immaculate snow coat. On the trails, 3000 meters below, the flakes which put on the test the organisms of the trailers have already melted under the softness of the sun, dragging radically with the mausade weather of the great start of Friday evening, heckled by a memorable storm.
Of the 2500 engaged, more than 800 runners could not join Chamonix and realize what is often the dream of a life. Among them, many favorites had to return arms like the quadruple winner François d’Haene. “I’m not going to lie to you: it’s hard, even very hard. The dream stopped in Italy. Strange pains invited themselves but I wanted to believe it and try everything I could … The body held everything it could but I had to abdicate in the middle of the night, “he said, leaving the field free to the Briton Tom Evans who won his first UTMB at 33 and succeeds French Vincent Bouillard, a surprise winner in 2024.
Will Kilian Jornet return to Chamonix?
Among women, it has long been believed that the American Courtney Dauwalter, superstar of the discipline and nicknamed “the president”, was going to hold her rank and obtain a new coronation after 2019, 2021 and 2023. But Saturday, in the early morning, she could not face the rise of the New Zealand Ruth Croft and the Annecian Camille Bruyas who took commands. After a mano in Mano in Anthology despite the 150 km already traveled on the trails, Ruth Croft takes the ascendant and goes to victory, ending in 10:56 p.m. and signing an impressive 21st place to the general.
As with men, it is an unprecedented winner that marks the control of the Anglo-Saxons this year on the UTMB. If they made less noise, the Chinese made a breakthrough in the rankings, placing three men among the first ten, while the African continent, which forms the best runners in athletics, always remains absent at the top of the ultra-trail.
The end of the UTMB also encloses a crazy week in Chamonix, the capital of mountaineering that turns, each last week of August, in the world capital of the trail where the less -mileage races multiply. Most of the economic players in an expansion sport come to it, alternating jogging under Mont Blanc, contract signatures and product launches with great influencers. But beyond this Babylon Raout, which accompanies the UTMB, a question burns all the lips: will King Kilian Jornet finally return to resume his scepter next year?
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