2023 UTMB champion Jim Walmsley and 2022 second-place finisher Mathieu Blanchard have confirmed they may seem at this yr’s Extremely-Path du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) ultimate, which takes place in Chamonix, France on Aug. 30, in accordance with a report by iRunFar. Quite a lot of different ultratrail elites have additionally been introduced, together with the U.Ok.’s Tom Evans, who completed third in 2022 and who received Western States 100 in 2023, and Canada’s Christian Meier, the previous professional bicycle owner who received the 145-km TDS race final yr.
On the ladies’s aspect, 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 received Western States in 2022). (Three-time UTMB champion and course document holder Courtney Dauwalter doesn’t seem on the checklist.)
🌍 118 nationalities
On the similar time, the worldwide aura stays simple. Jim Walmsley and Courtney Dauwalter, our two current winners, have impressed a lot of their compatriots. There was a 56% improve 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 accomplice, 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 choices and its remedy 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 here are the highest ladies’s runners for the #UTMB, #OCC, and #TDS on the 2024 UTMB Mont-Blanc pageant of occasions, this summer season in Chamonix, France.
(The #CCC entrants checklist 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 abilities earlier than lastly profitable UTMB on his fifth strive 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 residing 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.
