After hours of beating each other, the battle between Rémi Bonnet and Elhousine Elazzaoui in the Marathon du Mont Blanc is resolved in the dark because no camera can follow the Moroccan’s attack on the final descent to Chamonix and his finish line just a few meters from the statue he honors. to Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, the Geneva scientist who in the 18th century launched the challenge of summiting that fearsome sentinel of 4,809 meters, hidden this Sunday in the fog. Elazzaoui, Kilian Jornet’s star signing for his team, Nnormal, takes the most important victory of his career after taking the podium in the first three races of the Golden Trail Series. And he does it by dethroning the best climber in the world after 43 kilometers and 2,600 meters of positive gradient after 3h30m10s. The final descent also smiled at Judith Wyder: the Swiss woman who never gives up won perhaps the highest level race in history.
Chamonix is the trail mecca for the Mont Blanc Ultra Trail, but those 171 kilometers are as epic as they are dispersed: 20 hours is too much for any coverage. In contrast, a Golden run is like comparing ‘The Ten Commandments’ to a Netflix series. Far from the ultra distance, the fastest runners exchanged blows as if there were no tomorrow in a classic – one of the three fixed events on the calendar along with Zegama and Sierre-Zinal – with more than 2,300 runners at the start divided into six waves .
The attack plan for a marathon, the ceiling of the ‘short’ distances of the trail, depends on the rivals. Bonet and Sophia Laukli flew towards victory in 2023, but their pens have added roosters and prudence avoided excesses at the start. Especially for the American, the overall winner last year, with the shoot just after her knee injury in the ski season to face Wyder – with whom she tied on points –, Madalina Florea – winner of the final – and Maude Mathys, the absent myth. The Swiss had the same reasoning, who was saved from the list of Kenyans in the first 13 kilometer runs. So both races began to be written after Le Tour, with the climb to the Col des Possettes, the roof of the profile (2,200 meters), after 3.4 kilometers at 21%.
Bonet took out his climber’s wings and broke the lead group. The final stretch of the climb hid the runners in dense fog, so Elazzaoui left the rest of the contenders before the top and put his downhill wildcard on the table. He made up the difference with his fluidity in the first section of the descent, with wet sharp stones, loose roots and just enough visibility. The Swiss accelerated again after the Vallorcine aid station, after kilometer 23, but the Moroccan was a limpet. Thus began a titanic fight in which they alternated roles: Elazzaoui overtook him on the climbs and his rival attacked on the most dangerous descent, too short to push the limits.
Thus they reached the last climb, 3.6 kilometers at 13% that they solved with a vertigo-inducing speed of vertical ascent: at times, their average was 1,800 meters of positive gradient per hour, the altitude that separates Benasque from Aneto. They passed an overflowing waterfall – the floods in the Alps are noticeable in the valley – the place where a dehydrated Elazzaoui sought solace 12 months ago before abandoning. They reached the last peak, the La Flégère refuge, after a final kilometer without vegetation, which is torture on hot or windy days, with nothing resolved. There Roberto Delorenzi, the recent European champion who closed the podium, was scanning the horizon. There are still three kilometers of slides on which Bonet spent his last attack. Unlucky. The Moroccan resolved the descent – 800 meters of altitude were lost in less than four kilometers – as he did last year to win in the Dolomites and the Golden final. Both celebrated such intimacy with a sincere hug at the finish line.
Like the one Wyder gave to Laukli, who came fourth after refusing again and again to give up, following the group that left her and attacking when it arrived. The problem with inactivity is in the descents, since they are so aggressive that they rarely train outside of competition: their quads did not have that baggage and they paid dearly for it. Mathys also spent his bullet, attacking on the climb to Possettes, but lost momentum on the descent and finished eighth. The American was amazed when she received the hug: “Have you won?”
Because he saw how Florea, the Romanian asphalt flyer who takes no prisoners, took advantage of the overtaking of the male leaders, around kilometer 30, to attack without reservation. She followed them closely with her wide stride, as if she were wearing the Formula 1 DRS, and left Wyder almost a minute behind in La Flégère. A meager income against the best downhiller in the world, who tamed those timid trails between wet stones while the leader clung to a metal railing on a tricky step and looked back. When the Swiss arrived, she accelerated without palliatives, tracing the curves of the final descent like a dancer. With slip included, the price of pushing the limits. It was the first marathon in years for someone who had a stroke when she was pregnant that affected her vision and suffered a serious hip injury. Thus she won her first race in Chamonix, with her eternal smile, hugging the Chinese Miao Yao, third, and Rosa Lara Feliu, fifth. In boys, Miquel Corbera was ninth.
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