Chamonix (France) (AFP) – The Spanish ultra-trail star Kilian Jornet wrote a new page in his career on Saturday August 27 by winning his fourth Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB), setting a new record time, below the symbolic bar of twenty hours. American Katie Schide wins the women’s race.
It’s been eleven years since the Catalan Kilian Jornet, 34, a world reference in ultra-trail, had not won the queen of mountain running races, 171 km long and 10,000 meters high in elevation gain. The Spaniard took it in 19 hours 49 minutes, while the previous record, set by his compatriot Pau Capell in 2019, was 8:19 p.m. In 2018, he was forced to retire following a wasp sting, to which he is allergic.
A Frenchman on the second step of the podium
Kilian Jornet already had two victories to his credit this year in Zegama (Spain) at the end of May, then in the Hardrock 100 (100 miles, around 160 kilometres) on which he beat his great French rival François d’Haene and set an absolute record on the test. On the other hand, he failed to win at the famous race in Sierre-Zinal (Switzerland) in mid-August, finishing fifth. Jornet was five minutes ahead of Frenchman Mathieu Blanchard, on whom he managed to dig away in the last twenty kilometers, but who also finished in less than twenty hours (19:54).
” He pushed me on the climbs, and I pushed him on the descents, we did the accordion like that, and that’s what allowed us to do these extraordinary times “, rejoiced the native of the South of France, aged 35, who had ranked third last year on the event.
“But why am I doing this! »
It was a ” amazing race “, he welcomed the arrival Jornet, evoking “ a very special day “. Jornet didn’t give his American rival Jim Walmsley any chance either, despite being among the favourites. The third place on the podium went to the young British soldier Tom Evans, who achieved a time of 20 hours 34.
After his first victories in Chamonix in 2008, 2009 and 2011, Jornet, agile as a chamois, thus fulfills his bet of equaling the quadruple record of Frenchman François d’Haene, who had decided this year to skip the UTMB . ” When you finish an ultra, you always ask: “Why am I doing this!” he said after his race.
However, the game did not appear to be won in advance for Jornet since his participation in the race had been questioned for a time this week following a positive test for Covid-19. After two days of suspense, it had not been confirmed until Friday noon, just a few hours before the start. A specialist in ski mountaineering, mountaineering, ultra-trail and mountain running, Jornet is considered one of the greatest mountain runners of all time, he is sometimes nicknamed “the extraterrestrial of the trail”. In ski mountaineering competitions, he has eight world championship titles in the discipline.
“If dreams remain dreams, we will never know who we really are”
It was at the end of February 2022 that Kilian Jornet announced his return to the most famous Ultra-Trail race. ” If we don’t try, if dreams stay dreams, we’ll never know who we really are Jornet often repeats. In 2008, when he won his first Mont-Blanc ultra-trail, he was only 20 years old. Until then, these races were thought to be reserved for people in their forties. Until the age of 13 and his entry into the ski mountaineering sector of Font-Romeu, Kilian Jornet lived at an altitude of nearly 2,000 meters in Cerdagne. His father was a mountain guide.
” In winter, to go to school, with my sister Naila, we did fifteen kilometers on cross-country skis, he told in the columns of Release. In the evening, my mother would take us for a walk without a lamp in the forest. She made us understand that we are part of nature, that we are animals among animals. This madman for wide open mountain spaces knows his world perfectly. ” The mountain is not just sun, green fields, flowers and cows. It’s also rocks, storms, snow… You can die there. »
The arrival of the runners in Chamonix, which took place under a brilliant sun, comes to close a week of trails of different formats organized at the foot of the peaks of the massif of the giant of the Alps under the aegis of the UTMB Mont-Blanc group. The event was bereaved overnight from Monday to Tuesday by the fatal fall of a Brazilian trail runner.