“The Skinny Line” is a brand new movie from Scott Sports activities, produced by Timothée Ranger, which follows 4 of the model’s skilled athletes as they put together for and compete on the 2024 UTMB. We meet Cody Lind (U.S.), Anne-Lise Rousset Séguret (France), Rémi Berchet (France), and Andy Symonds (U.Ok., lives in France) as all of them search to carry out at their greatest on the 109.3-mile race round Mont Blanc.
The UTMB course begins in Chamonix, France, and dips into Italy and Switzerland earlier than looping again to Chamonix, overlaying 32,480 toes of elevation achieve alongside the way in which. The race at all times attracts a very aggressive subject, and the movie delicately highlights the psychological challenges of getting ready for a feat of this magnitude. The athletes are strolling a skinny line between efficiency and damage, success and failure. The place does self-belief finish and exterior stress start?
There’s a transferring perception — one which isn’t usually explored in movies of this nature — into the expertise of the athlete inside the crowds at a race as massive as this. There are literally thousands of fellow runners, but additionally hordes of spectators lining the course. The environment is buzzing, it’s electrical, however as Symonds notes, it’s in stark distinction to the quiet of the mountains. Berchet says, “Whenever you’re within the viewers it’s nice and unbelievable, while you’re on the opposite aspect, it’s very scary and irritating.” We see that Rousset Séguret is all smiles as soon as the race is underway, however she recollects emotions of tension within the stress of the beginning line.
Anne-Lise Rousset Séguret on the 2024 Madeira Island Extremely-Path. Photograph: Scott Working
That is very a lot a movie concerning the highs and lows, not simply of this iconic race, however of the game usually. Berchet thoughtfully articulates the significance of operating since you truly need to, and discovering the precise causes to coach. Rousset Séguret offers measured views about balancing the game alongside her life as a mother and as a vet. Symonds eats some ice cream. And Lind merely states, “Typically operating is simply so rattling exhausting.”
Andy Symonds with the promised end line ice cream that acquired him by way of the 2024 UTMB. Photograph: Alanis Duc
The movie comes on the race from a very pretty assortment of private angles in what serves to be an altogether transferring and provoking piece of storytelling. It’s a celebration of the mountains and trails that acquired these athletes into the game, whatever the consequence of the race.
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Cody Lind on his solution to inserting seventh on the 2024 UTMB. Photograph: Alanis Duc
