After a great weekend of Skyrunning in the Scottish Highlands, Jasmin Paris and Jonathan Albon have won the 2016 Salomon Glen Coe Skyline™. The race is the final one in the three-race Skyrunner® World Extreme Series which Paris and Albon also won overall.
The 55km course with 4750m of vertical height gain over technical terrain provided a great run for all the competitors – in total 158 of the 217 starters made it through the cut-off times to finish the race.
The Extreme Series was introduced by the International Skyrunning Federation in 2016 to showcase the three most technical Skyrunning races in a stand-alone circuit: the Tromsø SkyRace® in Norway, the legendary Kima Trophy in Italy and the deciding finale, and Scotland’s first international Skyrunning race, the Salomon Glen Coe Skyline™.
Jonathan Albon, is a 27-year-old Londoner who lives in Norway and came to the fore on the Skyrunning scene in 2015 when he won the Tromsø SkyRace®. A second place in this year’s race and a 7th place in Kima placed him behind Tom Owens. He finished the Salomon Glen Coe Skyline™ in 6:33:52, taking almost one hour off last year’s course record.
He said, “The race course was a mix of scrambling, hiking, running, amazing views, nature…the weather. It was a ride from start to finish. I realised I could be the Extreme Series champion on the last big climb when I saw Tom was struggling and Marc, who was second, had only done one of the Series races. I’m really happy for the title.”
32-year-old Briton, Jasmin Paris, the Tromsø race winner and who just put in a great performance at UTMB, led the race comfortably from the get go. She finished in 8:15:56.
“It was a great, great race,” she said. “I loved the race, the Series. I enjoy the energy you get. I really like that scrambling, technical stuff. I don’t really like trail, flat running. I wasn’t feeling that confident as Ruth caught me at the end of the trail in the valley and I could see Malene behind me. I couldn’t really sit around and wait so I pushed and joined a couple of guys who ran with me to the end where they dropped me.”
The top five finishers were:
Women
- Jasmin Paris (Great Britain) 08:15:56
- Malene Blikken Haukoy (Norway) 08:23:04
- Sarah Ridgeway (Great Britain) 08:44:40
- Ruth Croft (New Zealand) 09:10:33
- Martina Valmassoi (Italy) 09:14:37
Men
- Jonathan Albon (Great Britain) 06:33:52
- Tom Owens (Great Britain) 06:37:21
- Marc Lauenstein (Swiss) 06:54:37
- Finlay Wild (Great Britain) 07:00:57
- Greg Vollet (France) 07:10:19
