One of the best-known runners in the world, Hoka athlete Jim Walmsley is the pride of America’s trail running scene. 

Even as far back as high school, Walmsley was a runner, becoming the best cross-country runner in his home state of Arizona.  

Attending the United States Air Force Academy for college, he became captain of the cross country and long-distance running teams, competing across a range of different distances and events. 

In 2014 he began entering competitions, winning three out of the four he entered including the JFK 50 mile. 

From there he didn’t look back. He won the competition again in 2015, before running his first 100km in 2016 at Bandera. 

He won that, of course, along with several other races that year, becoming a professional and truly establishing himself as one of the USA’s premier long-distance runners. 

Since then, he’s added more and more medals to his tally. Notably, he is a four-time winner of the Western States 100 and holds the course record for the historic competition. 

In 2023, he achieved his greatest win to date when he became the first American man to win the UTMB in its 20^th edition. His near obsession with winning the race saw him move to the French Alps, and his victory was widely applauded throughout the ultrarunning community.

Jim Walmsley Record and Results

In 2014, Walmsley not only won the JFK 50-mile (the first of three successive victories in the competition), but also the Don’t Fence me in Trail Run 30km and the Old Gabe 50km. 

That year proved to be an accurate prelude to the glittering career that was to come.  His first 100km race ended in victory at Bandera in 2016, a year which also saw him claim wins at the Lake Sonoma 50, Mesquite Canyon 50km and Moab’s Red Hot 55km as he begun to make a name for himself on the North American running scene. 

2017 then saw him truly announce himself on the international stage, with a statement victory at the 102km Tarawera Endurance Run and a fifth-place finish at UTMB, winning plenty of shorter distance races in the US too. 

He got his first Western States victory in 2018 after a DNF the year before. He went on to win in 2019, where he set the record time of 14:09:28, and then triumphed again in both 2021 and 2024, the latter seeing him set the second quickest time (14:13:45) after a thrilling battle with Rod Farvard.

Other significant results include the 2019 World Long Distance Mountain Running Championships, hosted that year at the K42 Adventure Marathon in Argentina, and the Ultra-trail Cape Town 100KM in 2021.  

Since his fifth place UTMB finish in 2017, he had two DNFs in 2018 and 2021 before finishing fourth in 2022. He then went on to win the 2023 UTMB, having dedicated almost an entire year to preparing for the race.