Four Takeaways From UTMB Mont Blanc Week
Championship season is away and this year’s edition of UTMB Mont Blanc did not disappoint — even with the mountain throwing weather late in the week. (The lesson, as always, is for me to never mention weather in a pre-race report again, unless you want the weather to become part of the story.) Between reroutes, a two-hour delayed start, and rain that never seemed to let up once it started falling, the 2026 UTMB World Series Finals still produced some of the most dramatic racing this event has seen in years. Here’s four takeaways from the 2026 week.
OCC: A Three-Second Miracle and a French Return to Form
The week opened with the OCC on Thursday, and somehow the “short” race ended up delivering the tightest finish in the event’s history. Lauren Gregory ran down Naomi Lang in the final 800 meters, passing her on the last bridge into Chamonix and holding on to win by just three seconds. Sara Alonso rounded out the podium barely a minute back, meaning the entire women’s podium was separated by little more than a minute after six-plus hours of racing.
The men’s race went the opposite direction entirely. Frédéric Tranchand went to the front around the 7K mark and simply never came back. By Col de Balme, roughly halfway through the reworked 60K course, he’d built an eight-minute cushion, and he cruised into Chamonix in 5:10:08 for the first French OCC win since Xavier Thévenard a decade ago. Nashon Kiplimo, a relatively unproven Kenyan runner, closed hard late to take second, with Miguel Benítez third.
Add in a new high point on the reroute between Col de Balme and Col des Posettes, and it was a fitting curtain-raiser: a course that fought back, and two storylines that couldn’t have been more different.
CCC: Kaspersen Makes History, Minoggio Times His Move Perfectly
Friday’s CCC is the “middle sister” of UTMB week, and this year it more than earned its keep. Yngvild Kaspersen became the first woman ever to win the CCC twice, and she did it the hard way — sitting patiently through the early miles before making her move as darkness closed in, running down both Toni McCann and Miao Yao to break the tape in 12:01:14. It was a redemption arc, too: Kaspersen had DNF’d this same race a year ago, and dropped out of Western States just months earlier while running in the top ten.
On the men’s side, Cristian Minoggio — a 42-year-old dam keeper from Italy — pulled off the same kind of patient, late-race takeover. Hans Troyer, an American, had pushed the pace early and built a real gap, but Minoggio reeled him in over the final third of the course and pulled away for good, finishing in 10:21:48. Miguel Arsénio came through for second, with Troyer holding on for third.
The course itself kept changing shape all week — first a reroute around Bovine after Champex-Lac, then a second change mid-race to skip the La Flégère climb — and conditions were miserable, with rain hammering runners for most of the day. Fittingly, Minoggio crossed the line just as the UTMB field, delayed two hours by the same storms, was setting off behind him.
UTMB: Dhiman Breaks Through, and L’Hirondel Becomes a Triple Crown Winner
Which brings us to the big one. UTMB started two hours late Friday night because of thunderstorms, and organizers were forced to cut the Pyramides Calcaires section out of the route. It should have been terrible conditions to run fast. Someone forgot to tell Ben Dhiman.
The American, who’s based in France and had DNF’d his first two UTMB starts before finishing second last year, took the lead on the Col de Bonhomme around 40K and just kept pulling away. By the finish in a packed, rain-soaked Chamonix, he’d built a 31-minute gap and stopped the clock at 18:16:29 — the first man ever to break into the 18 hour window, and more than an hour and a half quicker than his own runner-up finish twelve months earlier. He’s now only the second American man to win UTMB, after Jim Walmsley in 2023, and he did it despite a hard fall with just 10K to go.
Behind him, the race for the rest of the podium was the real nail-biter. Baptiste Chassagne held on for second in 18:47:38, but Caleb Olson came flying through the field late — he was fourth at Trient — and closed to within 46 seconds of Chassagne at the line, giving the U.S. two men on the UTMB podium.
The women’s race was also full of surprises. Blandine L’Hirondel didn’t just come from behind — she came from way behind. UTMB’s own splits had her sitting 82nd overall at Les Contamines, 32K in, which turned out to be the furthest back she’d get all day. From there she picked her way forward at nearly every checkpoint: 60th at Col de la Seigne, 48th at Arête du Mont-Favre, 29th at Champex-Lac, until she and Rachel Entrekin arrived at Lac Combal (68K) just eight seconds apart, both of them having quietly run away from Courtney Dauwalter and the rest of the field. Dauwalter’s day ended at Lac Combal, where she withdrew already more than 30 minutes off the lead; she’d go on to spend the rest of the night out on course cheering on L’Hirondel and everyone else still moving, which is about as on-brand as it gets.
That’s when L’Hirondel turned the duel into a rout. She led Entrekin by four minutes leaving Courmayeur at 81K, nine minutes at Refuge Bonatti, and just kept extending it over the Grand Col Ferret and through the second half of the race. She crossed the line in Chamonix in 21:54:49 — the first time any woman has broken 22 hours on this course, beating Katie Schide’s 2024 mark by nearly 15 minutes, even accounting for this year’s shorter, storm-altered route. It’s also L’Hirondel’s third different UTMB Mont Blanc crown, after wins at OCC (2021) and CCC (2022), plus a pair of UTMB near-misses (third in 2023, fifth in 2024). That makes her only the second woman ever to complete the OCC-CCC-UTMB triple crown, following Ruth Croft, who did it just last year. Entrekin held on for second in 22:15:54. Emily Schmitz was outside the top 100 early on but charged through the field to take third in 22:17:28, only 1:34 back.
An Update on Jeff Browning
Not everything from UTMB week was cause for celebration. Jeff Browning, the 55-year-old “Bronco Billy” who’s been a fixture in American ultrarunning for two decades, suffered a heart attack roughly 129K into the TDS on Monday night. He was treated on course, defibrillated at an aid station, and airlifted to a hospital, where he underwent an emergency procedure to place three stents.
The good news: Browning has since regained consciousness and is alert, and his family says his doctors are optimistic about his recovery. He’s expected to remain in France for at least the next couple of weeks before he’s cleared to fly home. Friends of the family have since set up a GoFundMe to help cover medical costs and travel, along with lost income while he’s out of commission as a self-employed coach — it’s already climbed well past $190,000. Given how much of the sport he’s touched — a 2018 Hardrock win, more than 200 ultra finishes, and countless athletes he’s coached, paced, or just talked off the ledge at mile 80 — it’s not a stretch to say a good chunk of the trail community spent this week checking his Instagram as often as the live tracker.
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