Montreal’s Mathieu Blanchard has confirmed he’ll toe the beginning line at Extremely Path du Mont-Blanc in two weeks, becoming a member of an elite lineup that organizers of the 171-km race are billing the strongest elite discipline for the reason that race started 20 years in the past.
Blanchard will likely be vying for his third consecutive podium end in Chamonix on Sept. 1. He ran final 12 months’s race in 19 hours, 54 minutes and 50 seconds to complete an in depth second behind Spain’s Kilian Jornet, who ran 19:49:30 for a brand new course document. In 2021, Blanchard completed third behind French runners François D’haene (20:45:59) and Aurélien Dunand-Pallaz (20:58:31).
In June, Blanchard ran 15:37:02 to complete sixth in his Western States Endurance Run debut. He instructed Canadian Working after the race that Western States introduced a uniquely tough problem: “I pushed by, I fought laborious, my physique was tremendous painful like by no means earlier than,” he stated, including he was proud to earn the “mythic buckle” awarded to Western States winners.
Among the many giants of path working Blanchard will likely be up in opposition to at UTMB is British runner Tom Evans, who ran the fourth-fastest time in Western States historical past (14:40:22) to win this 12 months’s males’s race, and who completed behind Blanchard finally 12 months’s UTMB to put third (20:34:35).
“I’m extremely enthusiastic concerning the thought of collaborating within the UTMB this 12 months,” Evans just lately instructed UTMB. “I’m coming into the occasion in a significantly better place than final 12 months once I was contemporary from a knee operation. The race is so stuffed with historical past and for the twentieth anniversary, I need to be a part of the story by doing a Western States 100 Endurance Run and UTMB double. It’s an enormous problem and with the power of the peloton, it received’t be simple, nevertheless it’s a contest I’m wanting ahead to and consider I can obtain.”
Along with Jornet, this 12 months’s males’s discipline will see the return of American Jim Walmsley, who completed fourth in final 12 months’s race (21:12:12) and who has held the Western States course document (14:09:28) since 2019.
Different notable entries within the males’s discipline embrace Swiss runner Jonas Russi (winner of the Lavaredo Extremely Path by UTMB 2023), fellow Swiss runner Jean-Philippe Tschumi (who shared victory on the 100K Path 100 Andorra by UTMB with the American Ben Dhiman) and Sweden’s Petter Engdahl.
Arguably essentially the most compelling storyline from this 12 months’s UTMB will likely be American path working phenom Courtney Dauwalter‘s quest for the triple crown following her resounding victories at Western States (the place she ran 15:29:33 to smash the 16:47:19 course document set by Canadian Ellie Greenwood in 2012) and Hardrock 100 (the place she set a brand new course document in 26:14:08). The Golden, Colo.-based runner received UTMB in 2019 (24:34:26) and once more in 2021, when she set the present ladies’s course document (22:30:54).
She stands to face fierce competitors from an elite discipline that features New Zealand’s Ruth Croft (who completed second at Western States final 12 months), Germany’s Katharina Hartmuth (winner of this 12 months’s Eiger Extremely Path by UTMB), Italy’s Martina Valmassoi (winner of the 2022 TDS in Chamonix) and Hungary’s Eszter Csillag, who completed fifth finally 12 months’s UTMB.
