WATCH AGAIN: Western States 100-mile Endurance Run 2024: Walmsley and Schide a class apart

Analysis

We’ll start with the men given the presence of course record holder Jim Walmsley who achieved his lifetime ambition of winning the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc in Chamonix last year.

The 34-year-old from Flagstaff, Arizona is a three-time Western States winner and set the record of 14:09 in 2019.

His last success came in 2021 and plenty of his time since then saw him living in France with a single-minded focus on UTMB.

But he’s back in the States now and warmed up for this last week in unusual fashion with second place to Patrick Kipngeno in the Vertical Kilometre race at Broken Arrow.

He has to be the favourite but as you’d expect there are a whole host of talented rivals lining up to take him on.

Three of last year’s top five are back – American Tyler Green (second), Jiasheng Shen of China (fourth) and New Zealand’s Dan Jones (fifth).

Hayden Hawks, the runner-up in 2022 and a training partner of Jones, underlined his credentials again with a record-breaking win at the Black Canyon Ultras 100K race earlier this season which showed he was as good if not better than ever after knee surgery.

Perhaps less talked about in the build up but in our eyes a super-strong contender is Norway-based Briton Jon Albon.

He won CCC last year in Chamonix and heads into Saturday’s race on the back of his victory at Transvulcania – was it an omen that the man he beat there was none other than last year’s Western States winner Tom Evans?

The big question mark against Albon is his lack of experience at the 100-mile distance but his masterplan is winning OCC, CCC and UTMB and he’s already bagged the first two of those so the trajectory looks to be going in the right direction.

Still it’s Walmsley for the win for us, with Hawks and Albon joining him on the podium.

For the women it’s desperately hard to look past Katie Schide if she can replicate last year’s performance. She may have had to settle for second behind the GOAT that is Courtney Dauwalter but her time of 16:43 was the second-fastest ever.

Schide was the 2022 UTMB winner and looked in prime form in late April when she produced a Dauwalter-esque display by shattering the women’s course record (and finishing sixth overall) at The Canyons 100K in Auburn in April on many of the same trails used at WSER.

But it’s again a very deep women’s startlist and no fewer than six of last year’s top nine are back, with the others being Hungary’s Eszter Csillag (third), Zimbabwean Emily Hawgood (fifth), Swede Ida Nilsson (seventh), Canada’s Priscilla Forgie (eighth) and Leah Yingling (USA, ninth).

And even beyond them there are a whole host of other realistic contenders.

Rachel Drake has to be in that bracket if she can thrive for the step up in distance – she won her Golden Ticket with victory at Black Canyon 100K.

But our wildcard for the podium – alongside Schide and Csillag – is Heather Jackson.

The former triathlon star, who won multiple IRONMAN titles, has already made a splash in ultrarunning and gravel biking circles since swapping sports a couple of years ago.

She was part of the sprint finish at an epic Unbound gravel race recently and while she was a DNF on her debut here last year, the perception that she might go out too fast belies the fact she’s learning all the time – her win at the Javelina Jundred (100 Mile) in October marks her out as a big contender in our eyes.