Women's UTMB 2026: Hirondel Claims the Massif

• Blandine L Hirondel, 35, wins in 21:58:01 — breaking the women's course record of 22:09:31 set in 2024 by over 11 minutes.
• Rachel Entrekin (22:19:06) and Emily Schmitz (22:20:06) finish 2nd and 3rd, separated by just 94 seconds after 174 km through three countries.
• Schmitz, 45, is the age story of the race: she ran from 14th at the first checkpoint to 3rd at the finish, posting the fastest women's split on the Champex-Lac→La Giète segment in the process.
• Jazmine Lowther drops to 14th by the Courmayeur checkpoint, then claws back to 5th with the 2nd-fastest women's split on the Courmayeur→Refuge Bertone climb — one of the race's great recoveries.

Blandine L Hirondel came to Chamonix and rewrote the record books. Running 174 km around the Mont-Blanc massif — 9,700 meters of elevation gain, three countries, and a 45-hour time limit looming — she crossed the line in 21:58:01, slicing more than 11 minutes off the previous women's course record. Her move to the front came early: she sat 2nd through the opening checkpoint, then seized the lead before Lac Combal and never let it go, sealing the victory with the fastest women's split on the Lac Combal→Arête du Mont-Favre stretch. At 12:11 per mile across that terrain, in 97% humidity and cool, damp air, it was a commanding performance.

Behind her, Rachel Entrekin ran a textbook race to 2nd, moving from 3rd at the first checkpoint to 2nd and holding it all the way home in 22:19:06 — posting the fastest women's split on the Les Contamines→La Balme section along the way. Emily Schmitz, at 45, had a very different journey: she was 14th early, then 9th, then 7th, then 4th — a relentless, grinding climb through the field that culminated in the fastest women's split on Champex-Lac→La Giète and a 3rd-place finish in 22:20:40. Entrekin and Schmitz finished just 94 seconds apart after more than 22 hours of racing — nearly identical finish times masking very different race shapes, with Schmitz making up serious ground on Entrekin over the final segments.

Careth Arnold, 36, ran a composed race to 4th in 23:08:32, posting the fastest women's split on Col de Voza→Saint-Gervais. Then there is Jazmine Lowther's story: she fell as far back as 14th around Courmayeur, a deficit that would have ended most podium hopes. Instead, the 34-year-old threw down the 2nd-fastest women's split on the Courmayeur→Refuge Bertone segment and kept pressing, ultimately finishing 5th in 23:25:07 — a genuine mid-race rescue. Katarzyna Dombrowska (6th, 23:30:46), Lucy Bartholomew (7th, 23:47:41), and Antonina Iushina (8th, 23:53:10) rounded out a deep lead pack, with 267 women finishing this circumnavigation of Mont-Blanc in total.