A Canadian athlete, former professional bicycle owner Christian Meier, has gained the TDS, the 150-km mountain race with 9,315 metres of elevation achieve at UTMB (Extremely-Path du Mont-Blanc) that takes place within the lead-up to the principle occasion, a 100-miler across the base of Mont Blanc. His time was 19 hours, 36 minutes, 35 seconds.
TDS, which stands for “Sur les traces des ducs de Savoie” (within the footsteps of the Dukes of Savoy), the race takes runners from Courmayeur in northern Italy’s Aosta Valley to the Savoie, by means of the villages scattered among the many foothills of Mont-Blanc and ending, like all of this week’s UTMB races, in Chamonix. 1,649 runners began Monday, and the race has a cutoff time of 44 hours. (On the time of publishing, the race was solely 21 hours in, and solely eight runners had completed, all of them males.) Simen Hjalmar Wästlund of Sweden completed second, in 19:57:41, and Yannick Noël of France was third, in 20:18:02.
Congrats to @christianmeier for his win at @UTMBMontBlanc TDS! The primary Canadian to ever WIN one of many UTMB Last week races.
He joins @marianneinbedfo, @alissastlaurent, Jazmine Lowther, @campbelladam79, Sophie Limoges and @runningcase as the one 🇨🇦 to prime 10 at UTMB week!
— Liam (@aidstationfireb) August 29, 2023
Meier, who’s from Sussex, N.B. however lives in Girona, Spain, is making a reputation for himself on the trail-running scene, after a profitable biking profession (he competed within the 2014 Tour de France as a part of the Orica staff). In June, he entered the 50K occasion at Path 100 Andorra by UTMB on the final minute when a pal needed to bail, and gained. And earlier this yr, he represented Canada within the 85-km males’s lengthy path occasion on the World Mountain and Path Operating Championships in Innsbruck-Stubai, Austria. Inserting 53rd amongst 122 finishers at Worlds, Meier wrote that “whereas it appears it ended poorly … I take so many positives from this race. I felt perhaps my strongest but as a runner. I’ve belief in my course of.”
Two years in the past, tragedy struck TDS, with a runner from the Czech Republic falling to his dying about 60 km into the race, which begins mid-afternoon, that means runners should address darkness, and doubtlessly chilly and moist situations, to not point out lengthy ascents at altitude. The race was stopped, and a whole lot of runners had been compelled to attend on the mountain close to Passeur de Pralognan, the positioning of the accident, earlier than having the ability to descend to security. It was the primary dying recorded at any of the UTMB races in Chamonix; hopefully it will likely be the final.
Meier’s win at TDS bodes nicely for the opposite big-name rivals lining up on the varied races in Chamonix this week, together with 2022 second-place UTMB finisher and twin citizen Mathieu Blanchard (UTMB) (who was third in 2021) and mutliple Western States winner and course report holder Jim Walmsley; look ahead to our preview Wednesday.
