He crossed the finish line in Chamonix this Saturday at 1:49 p.m. Spaniard Kílian Jornet won the 2022 edition by going below 8 p.m. for the first time in history. Last year, Savoyard François D’Haene won the 171 kilometer race in 20 hours and 45 minutes. Frenchman Mathieu Blanchard finished second, also under the 20 hour mark (7:54:53 p.m.).
It has been eleven years since the skinny Catalan, 34 years old on the clock, had not won the queen of mountain running races, 171 km long and 10,000 meters high in elevation gain. The previous record time on the UTMB was signed by his compatriot Pau Capell en 2019 and stood at 8:19 p.m.. Jornet is about five minutes ahead of Frenchman Mathieu Blanchard, on whom he managed to dig away over the last twenty kilometers.
The Spanish mountain star Kilian Jornet, whose participation in the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) had been questioned by a positive test for Covid-19, finally took the start of the 2022 edition which was given this Friday at 6 p.m. Kilian Jornet, 34, was the big favorite for this event, which he has already won in 2008, 2009 and 2011. The Catalan, on the other hand, had to abandon halfway during his last participation in 2018 due to a bee sting, to which he is allergic.
An edition marked by the death of a runner on one of the races
A competitor in the Ultra trail du Mont-Blanc fell to his death on the night of Monday to Tuesday, around 1:30 a.m., on the PTL, the small trotte à Léon, one of the UTMB races, a-t – we learned from concordant sources. The accident has happened near the refuge of Plan Glacierbetween the Col de Tricot and the refuge, at an altitude of more than 2,700 metres.