Mathieu Blanchard marked himself out as a potential Barkley Marathons finisher of the future with an eye-catching debut and his subsequent reaction to ‘The Race That Eats Its Young’.
The Frenchman, who also holds Canadian citizenship, only became a pro athlete in 2022 at the age of 34 but has already racked up an incredible ultrarunning and adventure CV.
He has two podium finishes at UTMB, won the 2024 Diagonale des Fous and completed the 600km Yukon Arctic Ultra on foot in 2025.
Recently he’s transitioned to ocean sailing but even with all that experience, he still found the Barkley a test like no other.
‘Working in the shadows’
He was one of only four (out of 40) to successfully negotiate the first two loops but then on lap three, Keith Dunn posted: “Mathieu Blanchard quit on loop 3 due to cold and is tapped out”.
And writing afterwards on Instagram (translated here from French), he gave a fascinating account of how things had played out from the outset: “In this ultra-information society where it’s believed to know and master everything, finding yourself in the face of something that wilfully resists transparency is deeply disturbing.
“Keeping the date, the participants, the route, the registration process secret is not a whim or a posture, it’s a way of protecting an event that would probably have been dead a long time ago without this culture of silence. I understood that the founder, Laz, was not just a fantastical character, but a spirit of rare intelligence, blending provocative artist and methodical scientist, capable of creating a real bug in the modern sports system.”
And as to how he became involved, he added: “This project was born in me a few years ago and I didn’t have to be a fortune teller to understand that the Barkley would eventually attract me. The adventures that touch me often taste like uncertainty, loneliness, raw. But I knew I’d have to be patient, because being a good trail runner is far from enough here. So I learned to wait, to work in the shadows, to develop special skills.
“I won’t spill today the exact narrative of my race, I’ll get back to it, though the exercise will be particularly tricky because telling the Barkley story requires not saying everything.”
Self reliance
And like many of those who eventually go on to conquer the Barkley, it’s clear Blanchard sees it as unfinished business.
He explained: “This baptism gave me something significant: autonomy. The feeling that I could, one day, take a walk alone, without depending on anyone, just with my map, my compass and my instinct. And this is a major milestone in the Barkley universe. Maybe the most important one.
“I’m leaving with a clearer, stronger, more humble version of me too. And at the end of the day, maybe that’s the real gift of this race unlike any other: it doesn’t just ask you to run far, it asks you to become capable.
“Thank you Laz, Carl and your entire team.”
