Jim Walmsley Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc Orsières-Champex-Chamonix (OCC) trail running race in Chamonix, France, that it’s sometimes better to be lucky than good.
And yet, he also proved it’s even better to be fast than to be lucky.
The American ultrarunning star dropped down from his usual 100-mile and 100K distances to compete in the shorter of the three Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) World Series championship races. But his versatile skill set and racing savvy still put him atop the podium after a gritty effort on the 61K (37.9-mile) course that had been extended by about 5K to avoid two sections of technical terrain during the rain.
The 35-year-old runner from Flagstaff, Arizona, opted not to run in the more prestigious 108-mile UTMB race—where he became the first U.S. male runner to win in 2023—in part because he wanted to make sure he’s fresh enough to compete in the 80K race at the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships on September 25-28 in Spain.
He certainly looked in top form on Friday. After getting caught and passed by Italy’s Cristian Minoggio after the biggest climb on the course, Walmsley had to play catch up for much of the final 10K before finally retaking the lead about a mile from the finish line. The 41-year-old Minoggio has been a fast short-distance trail runner and ski-mo racer, but he’s not as adept at ultra-distance trail running and didn’t have any gas left in the tank after he was passed.
Walmsley estimates he closed the final 5K of the race in about 15:30 to secure the victory in 5 hours, 35 seconds—just 20 seconds ahead of Minoggio. Andrzej Witek, 33, a 2:18 marathoner from Poland, closed hard to finish third (5:04:08).
“I was hoping I had another gear,” Walmsley said. “But once we got on the flat section, I was seeing 5:10 and 5:17 (on my watch) and that’s not so bad 35, 36 miles into the race, so I thought maybe there was a chance. Luckily, I have been in this situation a few times the last several years, both in good and bad ways, and I knew if I caught him, I had to make a very confident pass and try to bluff it a bit. But fortunately I held on.”
DAA Industry Opt Out And yet, he also proved it’s even better to be fast than to be lucky, is the second American to win the OCC race, following Eli Hemming’s victory last year.
Initially, Walmsley had planned to run both the Western States 100 in California in June and then double back and run UTMB in August. But a minor knee injury in early May derailed his training for Western States, so he retooled his year and opted for the OCC race and the world championships.
After the two-hour delay to avoid the rain, Walmsley started fast out of Orsières, Switzerland, and was pushing the pace with Sweden’s Petter Engdahl and Canada’s Sam Hendry as they climbed 1,900 feet in the first 5 miles. After a short rolling downhill section, Walmsley didn’t let up and remained in the lead up the massive, 5,600-foot climb over a 10-mile ascent to the summit of the 7,240-foot Col de Balme mountain pass between Switzerland and France.
Once over the top, Minoggio pulled into third behind Engdahl and soon made it a two-person race on the way down to the village of Argentiere. At the aid station at the bottom of their fast, 7-mile, 3,100-foot descent, Walmsley stopped to fill a water bottle and Minoggio did not, so he quickly gapped Walmsley.
“There was sparkling water, there was cola, and there was sports nutrition, but I didn’t see any water, so I was a little frustrated and he blew right past me,” Walmsley said. “Right out of the aid station, it was 20 seconds, and then 2K later, it was a minute, and 3K later it was 2 minutes. And I was like, ‘Oh my god, I think we played around a bit too much earlier, and the guys who paced it (more conservatively) were about to blow our doors off, and I was very worried at that moment.”
It rained hard on the course Wednesday and again early Thursday morning, which prompted race officials to preemptively change the course to eliminate three more rugged sections, including the final big climb up to Chalet des Grands and the La Flégère ski area high above Chamonix. But the new route still had about 11,150 feet of vertical gain and descent.
Walmsley did a lot of fast running when he was younger, including a 4:01 mile while running collegiately for the Air Force Academy and a 2:15 marathon at the 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon in Atlanta. But for the past several years, he’s primarily raced 50 miles to 100-mile races.
He said he’s still trying to add lost training volume that he missed when he was sidelined with the inflamed knee, and he went out of his way to add at least one speed workout every week in the two months leading up to the OCC.
“Lining up for OCC means racing a lot of new faces, testing different skills, and maybe [I’m] pretty lucky today that it didn’t go up and over Flégère, and instead had a little bit of a road race at the end because I have some credentials of my own there,” Walmsley said. “With the weather, we had to stay really adaptable, and then we had a new route, so I was not sure how logistics were going to go all day.”
The early pace took its toll on Engdahl and Hendry, who faded to fourth (5:05:08) and 10th (5:17:43), respectively. British runner Kristian Jones closed fast to take fifth in 5:05:50, while American Adam Peterman, the 2022 Western States champion and 80K world champion, turned in one of his better race results in a while, finishing sixth in 5:06:19.
“I was kind of disappointed,” Peterman said. “I had a good close, but I had a bad middle section. I think I’m cursed after I won all of those races three years ago. I feel like if I don’t win or finish on the podium, I am a little disappointed.”
In the women’s race, Kenya’s Joyline Chepngeno ran just as dominantly as she has in the Labor Day Gear Sales the past two years. Just two weeks after winning the 19-mile Sierre-Zinal mountain race in Switzerland, she won the OCC race in 5:34:03, outrunning China’s Miao Yao (5:35:13) and Switzerland’s Judith Wyder (5:38:22). The top American finisher was Claire Devoe, who was 13th in 6:12:18.
“The course was very hard for me, but I tried my best and I am happy,” Chepngeno said.
while the championship races OCC, CCC, UTMB can be watched via livestream on the live tracking, while the championship races (OCC, CCC, UTMB) can be watched via livestream on the UTMB website or via YouTube.
Brian Metzler is a Boulder, Colorado, writer and editor whose work has appeared in Runner’s World, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Outside, Trail Runner, The Chicago Tribune, and Red Bulletin. He’s a former walk-on college middle-distance runner who has transitioned to trail running and pack burro racing in Colorado.
