Last updated: 05-Sep-18
UTMB continues to deliver on the drama and excitement with the results from Friday’s 101-kilometre Courmayeur, Champex-Lac, Chamonix (CCC).
Britain’s Tom Evans of Hoka One One ran a fantastically strategic race to come in first with a time of 10:44:32. As Steve Diederich, RunUltra Founder, put it, “Amazing how he crept up from 4th place in the last 40 minutes taking out each runner one at a time… a real strategist.”
History was made in the women’s race when Yao Miao took the prize with 11:57:46 and became the first Chinese woman ever to win a UTMB race.
It came a day after Jia Erenjia became the first Chinese person to do the same – taking first place at the OCC. Brilliant to see these amazing Chinese athletes coming in to their own on the world stage of ultra running.
She led from the start but attacked again at CP 7. At the end she told her support crew, “I did not know how far the second other girl was, but she seemed very good early in the race, and so I decided to run all the uphills from then on.” She was more than 30 minutes ahead of Katie Schide (USA) in second and almost 45 minutes ahead of the Swede Ida Nilsson, who was third.
We’re all about the love at RunUltra so did a bit of an, “Aww,” as Yao Miao was welcomed in by her boyfriend, Qi Min, who of course is a champion runner in his own right, coming in second after Tom with 10:50:07 in the men’s race. Pau Capell of Spain was in third with 10:52:26.
“I run how I feel,” Qi said at the end, “Today I felt good and I ran fast. Then I just could not run any more.”
Qi had led the race but Tom hunted him down on the final climb to take the win. Watching the finish line, Tom’s face was one big smile as he crossed with his traditional military salute. Before the race, he’d said to his sponsors, Hoka, “A lot of running performance starts in the mind. If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re probably right!“
