The commentators of
L'Équipe TV
, the chain that transmits the test live, speak of him as an alien.
They are the best mountain runners in the world.
They speak of the best of all.
They talk about Kilian Jornet, who strategically dominating the race with his talent and his legs, wins again, 11 years after his third victory, the Mont Blanc Ultra Trail (UTMB), the 100-mile race (171 kilometers exactly, and 10,000 meter drop) most prestigious on the circuit.
At 34 years old, the athlete from Sabadell who in 2022 had already won the Hardrock, in Silverton, the Colorado Rockies, and in Zegama, Gipuzkoa, breaks the event record, the first to break the barrier of 20 hours: 19 hours, 49 minutes, 35 seconds.
Second, five minutes away, the Frenchman Mathieu Blanchard.
The Barcelonan Pau Capell,
It is a hypnotic and addictive show for insomniacs at half past five in the morning.
A black computer screen flashing with tiny flickering lights, like fireflies.
They are the headlamps of minced meat athletes reaching the top of the Grand Col Ferret.
Four kilometers at 18.5% along a narrow path that the runners walk up, propelling themselves on poles, exercising their arms and strong abs.
Kilometer 102 of the UTMB, emblematic test, as emblematic as the buildings of modern architects, with signature, of the mountain races.
2,900 participants.
One man in command.
Kilian Jornet during the Ultra Trail race on Mont Blanc. JEFF PACHOUD (AFP)
The first light that appears lights the way for American Jim Walmsley, who passes first.
Almost 12 hours have passed since he started running, walking, going up and down, from Chamonix.
Three minutes later, the second firefly of the night crosses the wooden bridge that marks the top.
It's Kilian Jornet.
Physically destroyed, Pau Capell, generous and spirited at the start, and his attempt to break the 20-hour limit, will soon give up.
Walmsley-Jornet.
The duel that the fans were waiting for.
In one corner, the 32-year-old athlete from Phoenix (Arizona), the best of the champions on the other side of the Atlantic (triple winner of the Western States, 100 miles in the Californian Sierra Nevada), who wants to be the first North American to win the UTMB since its creation, in 2003, and, thus, remember that mountain races that add up to distances of several marathons are his invention, from the 70s in the Rockies, and for this he has gone to live in Savoy , a wooden cabin in the Alps, in a meadow where cows graze at 2,000 meters, and since spring he lives like a European.
All sacrifices are few, he says.
Opposite, Kilian Jornet, the extraterrestrial of the specialty, the 34-year-old Catalan athlete, who has overcome covid a few days ago, feels strong again.
In Chamonix, the start of as many ascents to the highest peak in Europe as he has done in record time, the finish line of the marathon of alpine marathons, his fourth victory in the UTMB awaits him, the first for 11 years.
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They are like the couriers of the Incas on Andean trails, indefatigable.
It dawns when both descend and then ascend towards Champex Lac, two and a half hours away.
The freshness is gone.
The heat begins.
Trouble for Jornet.
He cheered for the third man, Frenchman Mathieu Blanchard, who came back and came closer, and at the Champex Lac aid station, where Jornet stopped to sit down and have breakfast, he ran ahead of him.
Jornet continues to give way on the descent to Plan de l'Au.
A crisis.
Cramps on the descent, the terrain in which the Catalan is the best.
Not only Walmsley seems unattainable anymore, but also Blanchard.
If a marathon is a long-distance race, an ultra trail is an endless race, and the alternatives are infinite.
Loneliness is the greatest strength.
Solitude is Jornet's energy, and the distant gaze of the cows happily grazing at dawn on the so-called Alpages Bovines (Bovine Pastures), an infamous green slope that leads to La Giète with a constant gradient of 12%.
Kilometer 135. More than 15 hours of racing.
Shadows lengthen across the path as Walmsley, so agile a few minutes earlier, suddenly begins to slow down, to walk more slowly, to lean on his canes to keep from falling and not to push himself off the ground.
Cool as a cucumber, recovered, Jornet overtakes him.
He speeds to the shepherd's hut, where he fills his canteen with water, where several minutes later Walmsley crawls up,
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The duel resumes.
In a corner, Jornet.
Opposite, a new rival, Blanchard, who speeds up the descent towards the Trient aid station, kilometer 143, less than 30 from Chamonix.
Jornet arrives first.
He sits down to eat.
Blanchard does it a couple of minutes later and, as in Champex Lac, he grabs the food on the fly to ingest it and overtakes the Spaniard, forcing him to chase him with the food in his mouth.
It's 10 A.M.
Ahead, still four hours.
Kilian Jornet with Mathieu Blanchard and Thomas Evans, the three runners on the podium of the Mont Blanc Ultra Trail, this Saturday. JEFF PACHOUD (AFP)
Four hours in the company of Blanchard.
Together they ascend the very tough climb (three kilometers at 22%) to Les Tseppes.
Together they descend to Vallorcine.
Together they undertake the last ascent, up to the 2,118 meters of La Tête aux Vents (The Head of the Winds).
Accelerate Jornet.
Blanchard yields.
And there, down a seven kilometer slope, Chamonix.
And he is only accompanied by the sound of his steps and the shouts of encouragement from some fans with ikurriñas.
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