M55-59 at UTMB 2026: Weimar Gomez Conquers the Alps in 17 Hours

• Gomez takes it decisively: His 17:04:37 finish at a 15:16/mi average beat runner-up Alfio Campana by 1:16:18 — a commanding margin across 108 km of Alpine terrain.
• Positions 3–7 compressed: Enrico Musumeci (3rd, 19:06:13), Krzysztof Kwaśniewski (4th, 19:24:45), David Uliana (5th, 19:13:21), Thierry Cussac (6th, 19:34:32), and Adel Trabelsi (7th, 19:34:53) were all separated by just 28 minutes — a tightly packed chase pack across a race this long.
• Cussac and Trabelsi nearly inseparable: 6th and 7th finished just 21 seconds apart — 19:34:32 vs. 19:34:53 — after more than 19 hours of racing through Italy, Switzerland, and France.
• 69 finishers completed the point-to-point journey from Courmayeur to Chamonix within the 28-hour limit, a testament to the depth of the M55-59 field on one of ultrarunning's most demanding stages.

Weimar Gomez, 56, ran the M55-59 race from front to back — and then some. He entered the men's field around 382nd position at the early checkpoints and relentlessly worked his way up to 212th by the finish line, a climb of 170 places through the men's field over the course of the race. That kind of steady, disciplined progression across 6,200 meters of elevation gain — with the course topping out near 8,386 feet where thinner air can quietly erode pace — speaks to a runner who managed his effort precisely. His 15:16/mi average was a full minute per mile faster than Campana's 16:24/mi, and that gap compounded over 108 kilometers into an unambiguous victory.

Alfio Campana, also 56, had a different kind of race. He was actually positioned ahead of Gomez in the men's field through the early going — sitting around 353rd while Gomez was near 382nd — but faded relative to the field across the middle sections before recovering somewhat to finish 2nd in M55-59 at 18:20:55. He did flash one of the sharper segment efforts in the field, posting the 281st-fastest men's split on the Champex-Lac sortie to Trient stretch, suggesting he had a strong patch through Switzerland.

The battle for the podium behind Campana was genuinely compelling. Enrico Musumeci (3rd, 19:06:13) started deep in the men's field — around 606th — and climbed all the way to 341st by the finish, posting the 93rd-fastest men's split on the Vallorcine Entrée to Vallorcine Sortie segment late in the race. Krzysztof Kwaśniewski (4th, 19:24:45) ran a similar trajectory from 597th, also turning in a strong Vallorcine split (244th-fastest among men). Meanwhile, David Uliana (5th, 19:13:21) — who actually crossed the line before Kwaśniewski on clock time — had faded from 284th in the men's field to 354th over the final segments, enough for the 4th-place finisher to reel him in on adjusted standings. The 71°F heat and 74% humidity on race day made every climb and descent that much more taxing, and the athletes who paced the back half wisely were the ones who held their positions when it mattered.