One of the great sporting fairytales BUT who is unexpected UTMB hero Vincent Bouillard?

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.”