Mt. Fuji 100 2024 results: Courtney Dauwalter crushes women’s race and is third overall

The legend that is Courtney Dauwalter notched a crushing victory the women’s race at Mt. Fuji 100 – and finished a close third overall behind Chinese duo Guomin Deng and Qin Guidu.

American superstar Dauwalter, surely the greatest female ultrarunner of all time, had an incredible 2023 which included the unprecedented treble of Western States / Hardrock / UTMB.

And she carried on where she left off this season with a reappearance victory at The North Face Transgrancanaria in February.

That was the third of the 2024 World Trail Majors and she’ll now be almost impossible to beat overall having produced such a dominant display in Japan, the fourth in the series.

Kudos too to Deng who took over the lead before the halfway point and produced a superb performance of his own to stop the clock in 19:10:34, holding off Guidu and Dauwalter by just over 10 minutes.

A class apart

It all got underway at midnight local time and Dauwalter was soon out on her own in the women’s race and never threatened.

As dawn broke she was already half an hour ahead of her nearest female rival and she then started picking her way past nearly all the leading men too. She was up to sixth overall by the third of eight aid stations and, by the time she reached the seventh one, she only had Guidu and Deng ahead of her.

At the eighth and final one Deng had a 20-minute advantage but Dauwalter and Guidu were now running alongside one another and they’d narrowed the gap to around a mile with seven miles to go.

But the finish line would come too soon for them to claim the overall victory, with Guidu taking second in 19:20:52, exactly 30 seconds ahead of Dauwalter.

Stellar performance

It was yet another incredible performance from Dauwalter as she returned to the race for the first time since 2018.

And while year-on-year comparisons are notoriously tricky – given route changes, different conditions and more – she had said coming onto this race that it “will be fun to (hopefully) see how much I’ve grown and learned about running 100 miles in the last six years.”

In 2018 she was the first woman to finish in a time of 23:57:48 and 16th overall as Dylan Bowman took the title in 19:21:21. Her time today was 19:21:22!

All of which underlines the scale of this latest display – which was achieved in trademark fashion as she seemed to smile her way round virtually the whole 100-mile route, though the effort and toll on her body was illustrated when her post-race interview was slightly delayed to allow her some time to start the recovery process.

The second woman across the line, Japan’s Yukari Seimiya, reached the finish more than four hours later.

The next big target for Courtney is set to be a return to defend her Hardrock title – and this time without taking in Western States 20 days before!

2024 Mt. Fuji 100, Friday April 26, 100 miles

MEN

1. Guomin Deng (CHN) – 19:10:34
2. Qin Guidu (CHN) – 19:20:52
3. Ryo Murata (JPN) – 20:27:14

WOMEN

1. Courtney Dauwalter (USA) – 19:21:22
2. Yukari Seimiya (JPN) – 23:36:55
3. ChiYee Yan (HKG) – 26:15:46