F60-64 at UTMB: Rainey Weaver Dominates as All 12 Conquer Chamonix

• Rainey Weaver wins in 21:20:21 — nearly three hours clear of runner-up Carmela Vergura (24:16:03), a margin that grew steadily across every checkpoint.
• Machiko Moriyama's late surge: she entered the final stretch in a worse position than she started, but clawed back places late to finish 4th (25:39:42) — edging Zoraia Rocha Magalhaes (3rd, 25:49:13) by under 10 minutes after Magalhaes ran the faster Trient→Les Tseppes split.
• A tight cluster at the finish: places 6 through 12 were separated by under 56 minutes across 108 km and 6,200 m of climbing — Florence Poujol (7th, 27:21:10) through Nora Mabel Acuña (12th, 28:12:46) all finishing within a single hour of each other.
• Perfect completion: all 12 starters in the F60-64 field crossed the line from Courmayeur to Chamonix within the 28-hour limit — with Acuña doing so with just 12 minutes to spare.

Rainey Weaver, 61, turned this into a solo exhibition from the gun. Her gender place among all women improved at every single checkpoint — from 272nd after the first segment all the way to 149th by the finish — a relentless, metronomic march through the field at a 19:05/mi average over 108 km of Alpine terrain. That kind of sustained forward movement across a race this long, at this elevation, is a statement. She also posted the 82nd-fastest women's split on the Vallorcine Entrée→Vallorcine Sortie segment, one of the faster late-race legs in the women's field, showing no sign of fading in the closing hours.

Carmela Vergura, 63, held second place throughout — her gender standings tell a story of composure rather than drama, moving steadily from 312th to 218th among all women by the finish. But the real subplot of the race was the battle for third. Zoraia Rocha Magalhaes, also 61, ran the 237th-fastest women's split on Trient→Les Tseppes — a genuine push late in the race — and finished 3rd in 25:49:13. Moriyama, 60, told the opposite story: she slid from 253rd among all women at the first checkpoint all the way back to 291st mid-race, before recovering to 263rd at the line and 4th in F60-64 at 25:39:42. The positions flipped; the gap between them was just under ten minutes.

Behind them, five finishers between 27:02 and 27:33 made for a genuinely compressed mid-pack — Francisca Gonzalez Ibar (5th, 27:02:46), Nathalie Mostowski (6th, 27:17:43), Florence Poujol (7th, 27:21:10), Lola Chico Perles (8th, 27:28:31), and Emanuela Brocato (9th, 27:33:31) separated by just 30 minutes across five places. Jennifer Fox (10th, 27:56:22), Maria Rosa Aymat (11th, 28:03:10), and Nora Mabel Acuña (12th, 28:12:46) closed it out — every last one of them finishing a point-to-point crossing of the Alps on foot. Twelve started. Twelve finished.