The valley fills on a Monday now. That is new. Ten years ago Chamonix still pretended the race started on Friday. This year the sport arrived early, because the start list is the news.
Kilian Jornet is trying to break a tie with François D'Haene and take a fifth UTMB. He has not finished this loop since 2022. He lined up at Western States in June, dropped, and has spent the summer talking around a knee that everyone else is talking about directly. A fifth title on a compromised leg would be the most Kilian thing he could still do. A DNF would not end the myth. It would just date it.
The form horse is not the myth. Vincent Bouillard won this race in 2024, then went to Auburn in June and ran 13:46:15. Jim Walmsley's 2019 Western States record had sat on the sport like a ceiling. Bouillard took twenty-three minutes off it. Francesco Puppi, Ryan Montgomery, and Thomas Cardin all went under the old mark on the same afternoon. The 100-mile trail world changed its math in one day, and that math travels to the Alps.
Walmsley is here too. He DNF'd Foresthill in June. He won OCC last August. He is the American who already has a UTMB, which used to be a sentence nobody could write. The reset he needs is 171 kilometers long.
On the women's side the season has been a trilogy. Rachel Entrekin won Cocodona 250 outright in 56:09:48 and dragged the course record into a different sport. Courtney Dauwalter, second that week, went to Silverton and won her fourth Hardrock in 26:03:10. Jenn Lichter did not wait for either of them. She took Western States in 15:28:05, eighty-eight seconds inside Dauwalter's 2023 record, and she did it by racing the last 300 meters on a high-school track like it was a 5K. UTMB is the first time all three share a start line that the whole world will watch.
Katie Schide is the champion who makes this field cruel. She has already done the double. She still owns the Hardrock counterclockwise women's record. If the weather turns the race into a mountain event instead of a footrace, the valley will remember why she was the favorite in quieter years.
Kick Rocks will run the week the way HLTV runs a Major: start lists, power rankings, split desks, and a result that becomes the ranking. The monument is Friday night. The sport is already here.
