A year after their epic duel and their record times on the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (171 km and 10,000 m of elevation gain in less than 20 hours), we were delighted to find Kilian Jornet against Mathieu Blanchard. But the Spanish “ultra-terrestrial” will unfortunately be absent from the twentieth edition of the UTMB, which will start from Chamonix on September 1st.
“No UTMB for me this year. I still can’t run because of my sacrum injury. So we decided it was better to prioritize recovery and try to do something fun when the pain goes away,” Kilian Jornet said on Instagram on Thursday.
Status quo between Jornet and D’Haene on the UTMB
Quadruple winner of the event, the 35-year-old runner will therefore have to wait before he can possibly get ahead of the Savoyard François D’Haene (injured this season), who also won four times in Chamonix. Shortly after announcing his unexpected presence on this UTMB on July 12, Kilian Jornet confided in feeling a nagging pain in his pelvis and pausing running to try to participate both in Sierre-Zinal (Switzerland) and in the UTMB.
But the Catalan ultra-trailer, who has been living in Norway for several years and who had devoted his spring to mountaineering projects in the Himalayas, finally had to resolve to give up his two favorite races. In the absence of Kilian Jornet, the battle around Mont-Blanc, passing through France, Italy and Switzerland at the same time, therefore promises to be particularly indecisive between Jim Walmsley, Mathieu Blanchard, Tom Evans… and the incredible American Courtney Dauwalter.