Massif victory for Jonathan Albon

World champion on top form as weather clears for Mont-Blanc Marathon

If you have never been to Chamonix you have missed out on some of the most spectacular mountain scenery in Europe, if not the world. The towering Mont-Blanc massif dominates the area and provides the route for the classic Marathon du Mont-Blanc races from 24-26 June.

This year's festival of mountain trail running saw a British winner of the flagship multi-terrain Marathon du Mont-Blanc on Sunday (26 June) after severe storms had forced the cancellation of the 90K Ultra on Friday morning (24 June) and the postponement of the Vertical Kilometre race.

The festival had made a shaky start after heavy rain, hail, thunder, lightning and wind gusts up to 100kph struck the Chamonix Mont-Blanc Valley area, with temperatures below 5C at 2000m altitude.

The Verticle Kilometre went ahead at 07:00am on Saturday – 12 hours after the original Friday evening start time – and after gaining 1000m in ascent in 38:28 the winner was Vincent Loustau (France), with Jessica Pardin (France, 45:22) taking the women's race.

The rest of Saturday's race programme went ahead as scheduled and the stage was set for the main event of the weekend – the Marathon du Mont-Blanc with more than 2,000 competitors.

As the current trail world champion, ultra skyrunning world champion and obstacle course world champion, Jonathan Albon was honoured with race bib #1 for Marathon du Mont-Blanc (see image above) and the North Face athlete certainly did not disappoint.

Albon negotiated the highly technical 42K course with 2,540m ascent/descent in a remarkable 3:35:20 for victory by more than four minutes from Italy's Davide Magnini (3:39:41) and Japan's Ruy Ueda (3:40:42).

Three more countries were represented on the women's podium. Sara Olonso (Spain, 4:14:49) won from Caitlin Fielder (New Zealand, 4:20:21) and Moreno Dani (USA, 4:21:52).

To lose yourself in the atmosphere of this bucket list event view this 13-minute film of the 2018 race...