2023 UTMB champion Jim Walmsley and 2022 second-place finisher Mathieu Blanchard have confirmed they are going to seem at this yr’s Extremely-Path du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) closing, which takes place in Chamonix, France on Aug. 30, in response to a report by iRunFar. A variety of different ultratrail elites have additionally been introduced, together with the U.Ok.’s Tom Evans, who completed third in 2022 and who gained Western States 100 in 2023, and Canada’s Christian Meier, the previous professional bike owner who gained the 145-km TDS race final yr.
On the ladies’s facet, Canada’s Marianne Hogan (who completed second in 2022) is confirmed, as are 2022 champion Katie Schide of the U.S., France’s Claire Bannwarth and New Zealand’s Ruth Croft (who gained Western States in 2022). (Three-time UTMB champion and course document holder Courtney Dauwalter doesn’t seem on the record.)
🌍 118 nationalities
On the identical time, the worldwide aura stays simple. Jim Walmsley and Courtney Dauwalter, our two current winners, have impressed lots of their compatriots. There was a 56% enhance in pre-registrations from American runners in comparison with 2023 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/iM4ASJI9LV
— Dacia UTMB® Mont-Blanc (@UTMBMontBlanc) February 1, 2024
4-time champion Kilian Jornet and 2023 second-place finisher Zach Miller may even not be returning. After the October, 2023 announcement by UTMB and its minority companion, the Ironman Group, of a brand new race in Whistler, B.C. in 2024, and the Dec. 1 announcement that UTMB livestream announcer Corrine Malcolm had been fired, the 2 publicly questioned the group’s selections and its therapy of athletes. There was speak of a boycott, although Jornet and Miller dispute this; within the wake of all of this, common discussions between UTMB and the Professional Path Runners Affiliation (PTRA), of which Jornet is a founding member, turned extra frequent, with a view to smoothing relations between athletes and the race.
Listed below are the highest ladies’s runners for the #UTMB, #OCC, and #TDS on the 2024 UTMB Mont-Blanc pageant of occasions, this summer time in Chamonix, France.
(The #CCC entrants record is not on-line but.)https://t.co/grZUbY1wZw
— iRunFar (@iRunFar) March 4, 2024
Walmsley moved to France for 2 years to hone his mountain-running expertise earlier than lastly profitable UTMB on his fifth attempt in 2023 (he Walmsley first ran UTMB in 2017, ending fifth; he DNF’d in 2018 and once more in 2021, then completed fourth in 2022). Blanchard, who has returned to France after dwelling in Montreal for just a few years (and taking out Canadian citizenship), completed fourth final yr after following Jornet onto the rostrum in 2022. Hogan has been coping with accidents for a lot of the final yr and a half since her podium end in 2022.
