Vincent Bouillard caused one of the great sporting upsets when he made his dreams come true by winning the Olympics of trail running – UTMB, the Ultra Trail du Mont-Blanc.
It’s the one event that brings the very best runners from all over the world together each year – and has been won on multiple occasions by the two GOATs of the sport, Kilian Jornet and Courtney Dauwalter.
But compared to that duo, Bouillard is a relative unknown. He had never even taken part in the race before and has a full time job – read on to find out more…
Vincent Bouillard’s previous best results
No one had ever gone under the 20-hour mark for the 100-mile UTMB until Jornet did so in 2022.
But Bouillard managed that feat with his time of 19:54:23 as he won by nearly half an hour.
He does have some top results to his name, with wins in the Kodiak Ultra Marathons by UTMB – his only previous 100-miler – and the Gorge Waterfalls 100K, both of which were last year and in the United States.
But he only wore bib number 139 – the favourites start in single figures – and there wasn’t even a photo of him on the official race website!
Balancing work and training
The 31-year-old lives in Annecy and works full-time as a senior manager in product engineering / innovation for the race’s headline sponsors HOKA and speaking afterwards he provided more details on what is a quite incredible story and achievement.
He explained: “I’ve been coming to UTMB almost from the beginning – I’ve been here as a spectator, a volunteer, with my work at HOKA and I’ve crewed too so I’ve seen so many parts of this event.
“But to be here on the start line was a childhood dream.
“But it was literally beyond my wildest dreams to think that I could win, that was A++++ objective on the ranking! It’s just been an incredible day.
“I have a full-time job and I do not have any sponsorship contracts. I don’t know now if I will necessarily look for one – why not, but I also enjoy the freedom of not having any contracts. Or any pressure to have do do certain competitions or posting on social media, which I do not at all!”
Who has inspired Vincent?
While Bouillard said winning was beyond his wildest dreams, a measure of his talent is the company he keeps for some of his training runs – none other than last year’s winner Jim Walmsley.
And now Bouillard hopes his unlikely win will help show others just what can be achieved.
He said: “I do have people who have inspired me and I’ll name two of them, who are great friends of mine and were on the start line – Timo Tollefson and Jim Walmsley and it’s been an inspiration seeing them perform at their very best in racing and training.
“If I can inspire others it would be full circle and great. A beautiful part of the sport is the inspiration it can give people.”
