The Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB), the torture of 171 kilometres and 10,000 metres of positive gradient that has become the holy grail, devours its aspirants in the night and turns off their headlamps. Family members and coaches wait blindly in Courmayeur, the halfway point of the race, for the arrival of their runners in the early morning with the only clue being the last checkpoint. Jess Brazeau prepares everything for the arrival of Jim Walmsley, the American defending champion. But in just a few kilometres he goes from leading to being outside the top ten, touching his knee, more in need of therapy than rice. One of the few who knew Vincent Bouillard, the 31-year-old French engineer of his brand, Hoka, who was in the lead while his wife waited. Someone without a professional contract who was not in any pools and who changed his life in 19 hours, 54 minutes and 23 seconds with an unforgettable victory.
The UTMB Index is the ranking that scores athletes for their performances in races approved by the circuit. Bouillard had 832 points while the first 20 exceeded 900. “Just being at the start was already a dream,” summed up the engineer, who put on his shoes like 2,300 other runners who heard the bells of Chamonix ringing at 6:00 p.m. on Friday and Vangelis’s conquest of paradisewaiting for its chorus to unleash hostilities. The same soundtrack that celebrates its return. There’s not a pin to drop, but the scene evaporates in ten minutes: the curious return to the terrace and only a giant screen remains. Everything is in the hands of the mountain.
And the script is fulfilled because Walmsley opens the throttle when night falls and takes off on the first long climb. He is aiming for a historic double after winning the Western States, the hundred-mile race par excellence of the USA. But that triumph had its toll. The anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee is damaged and it shows: he can go up and down without pain, but he cannot digest the fast sections. It is striking how the volume in the Courmayeur pavilion drops when he enters – almost 20 minutes later than planned – respecting the fallen giant who eats by inertia, not because he plans to return. And how the noise returns when he leaves.
Despite being in the lead, nobody is betting on Bouillard. There is Tom Evans, the British soldier who got lost last year and ended up in hospital. Without Walmsley, it is his race. Otherwise, there is Germain Grangier: he is not the favourite Frenchman, but he has 898 points. The guest is still within reach of a host of contenders, winners of major races waiting for their moment. Like Pau Capell, one of the ten winners of the list of winners – in 2019 – who also needs therapy in Courmayeur, as the massage does not revive him. And he will have to wait to go under 20 hours, the challenge he set himself after conquering Chamonix. But the engineer managed it, the fifth to break this barrier – on routes that have varied – after Walmsley, Kilian Jornet, Zach Miller and Mathieu Blanchard.
A record that highlights his victory, despite the boycott of athletes like Miller, second last year, or Jornet, who is collecting four thousand meters in the Alps while his rivals run around him in France, Italy and Switzerland. His mountaineering route touches precisely on Mont Blanc, perhaps he saw its head-ons. Both lead a group that accuses UTMB of monopoly for establishing a system of almost 50 races around the world as an indispensable gateway to running in Chamonix – not only this distance, but others, from 15 kilometers to 54 or 100, something that in their opinion suffocates other events.
Bouillard is within reach of the dream he never dreamed of on La Flégère, the final climb. The sun is already shining, and it comes out at the end of the grove, raising the price of the last kilometre of bare mountain: three long curves between fine stones, converted into a route that a bus could pass through and which he travels while dozens of fresh-faced fans shout and film his feat. But at the top a scare awaits him: the judge who checks the extensive compulsory material. He must carry containers with a total capacity of one litre and he cannot find the second one, he fears he left it in Vallorcine. He moves his backpack, it appears and nervously begins the final descent. The engineer fails to distribute the elements in his backpack, but he ends up putting away the poles so as not to use them again.
The same descent that the last of the CCC had been going through a few hours earlier to the tune of mournful music – it started at 9:00 on Friday – and that his UTMB teammates will suffer on Sunday, who have 46 and a half hours to reach the finish line. Far from letting himself go – he was more than 27 minutes ahead of the second – he sprinted as if he were running the 100 metres. Only then did he embrace his achievement and retrace his steps to clap his hands, with his head on another planet, until someone told him to turn around. Then came his compatriot Baptiste Chassagne and the Ecuadorian Joaquín López, two other great surprises.
From the surprise in the men’s category to the exhibition of the big favourite, the American Katie Schide, in the absence of Courtney Dauwlater, who last year left Walmsley’s double short and won in Chamonix after also winning the Hard Rock. The truth is that her best version would not have guaranteed the title against a prodigious Schide who blew up the start race – she had a 20-minute lead after 32 kilometres – and did not let up. An advantage that allowed her to calm down at the refreshment stations and spend all the time in the world cooling off and replacing the ice in her handkerchief. Not only did she regain her title in 2022, but she broke the record of her absent compatriot (22h30m) with a time of 22h09m31. She was thirteenth overall; in 2021, Dauwalter was seventh.
You can follow EL PAÍS Sports on Facebook and Xor sign up here to receive our newsletter.
