M40-44 at UTMB 2026: Minoggio's relentless march to the front

• Cristian Minoggio won M40-44 in 10:21:53 (9:16/mi), posting the fastest men's split on the La Fouly→Champex-Lac segment and climbing from 20th to 1st among men across the race.
• Mengkai Bate (2nd, 11:57:24) and Tuomas Kari (3rd, 12:05:14) separated the podium by just under 8 minutes, both clawing through the men's field all day from positions outside the top 80.
• Rene Mair (6th, 13:49:05) and Aurelien Six (7th, 13:49:35) finished just 30 seconds apart after more than 13 hours and 108 km through Italy, Switzerland, and France.
• 200 men finished in M40-44, with the field spread across more than six hours from first to 20th place.

Cristian Minoggio ran one of the most commanding progressive races in M40-44. He started the 108-km, 6,200-meter-gain journey from Courmayeur sitting 20th among men, but he was already moving — by the midpoint he had worked his way into the top 10, and by the time the course crossed into France he had reached 3rd. The decisive blow came on the La Fouly→Champex-Lac segment, where he posted the fastest men's split in the entire field. From that point forward, no one in M40-44 came close. He crossed into Chamonix in 10:21:53, more than 95 minutes clear of second place.

Behind him, Mengkai Bate and Tuomas Kari told a similar story of patient, grinding forward momentum. Bate started 87th among men and finished 26th; Kari began 82nd and ended 29th. Both spent the better part of the day reeling in runners ahead of them, with Kari logging the 23rd-fastest men's split on the Tête de la Tronche→Refuge Bertone leg. Their 7-minute, 50-second gap at the finish reflects different paces on different segments — Bate ran the faster Vallorcine Sortie→Finish, logging the 17th-fastest men's split there — but Kari had built enough of a cushion earlier to hold 3rd.

Fourth and fifth place told a different kind of story. Lucas Hernández Sesma (4th, 13:27:46) and Victor Van Den Driessche (5th, 13:36:57) were separated by just over nine minutes, but Van Den Driessche's trajectory was notably more aggressive — he entered the race 157th among men and finished 63rd, one of the bigger climbs through the field on the day. He couldn't quite reel in Sesma, but the gap between them narrowed steadily across the back half of the course. Rene Mair and Aurelien Six, just 30 seconds apart after 13-plus hours of racing, closed out the top seven in a finish tight enough to reward every minute of effort on those final descents into Chamonix.