2022 UTMB runner-up Mathieu Blanchard, who holds each Canadian and French citizenship, has received the Diagonale des Fous–a steep, technical 100-mile race on Reunion Island, off the east coast of Africa, in 23 hours, 25 minutes and two seconds. This was Blanchard’s first look on the race, which began Thursday night.
Jean-Philippe Tschumi of Switzerland (who was third final 12 months) took the second spot on the rostrum, crossing the road just a little greater than half an hour behind Blanchard, in 24:05:32. Ben Dhiman of the U.S. was third, in 24:42:53.
Le Diagonale des Fous (Diagonal of Fools) caps a set of 5 races generally known as Le Grand Raid de la Réunion, which welcomed 2,000 rivals to its forbidding slopes this 12 months; the race options greater than 10,000m of elevation acquire, together with and heat temperatures. It’s a race two-time Quebec Mega Path champion Kelsey Hogan described as “brutally difficult” in a characteristic about her expertise on the 2022 race revealed in Canadian Working’s 2023 path particular challenge.
The course crosses the island from south to north (therefore “diagonale”), whereas runners climb endlessly; the race begins at 9 p.m., so the primary eight hours are spent navigating by headlamp.
Nearly 3,000 runners from 35 nations are competing this 12 months, together with 13 Canadians.
Blanchard, who has podiumed twice at UTMB (he completed second to Kilian Jornet in 2022) and who completed fourth final 12 months, was much less profitable at this 12 months’s race on Sept. 1, dropping out partway alongside. In 2022, Courtney Dauwalter turned solely the second athlete ever to win each the Grand Raid and Colorado’s Hardrock 100 in the identical 12 months; in 2023, France’s Aurélien Dunand-Pallaz turned the third. (Dunand-Pallaz returned this 12 months however dropped out of the race after 14 hours.) France’s François D’Haene has received the Grand Raid 4 instances.
Blanchard spent seven years dwelling in Quebec, and have become a Canadian citizen in early 2022.
On the time of publication, no girls had but completed the race.
For full outcomes of this 12 months’s Grand Raid de la Réunion, click on right here.
