Courtney Dauwalter smashed the course record in the women’s Western States – the worlds’ oldest 100-mile race – taking almost 80 minutes off the previous leading time. Meanwhile, Tom Evans, a former soldier, became the first Briton to win the men’s event.
Arriving at a remote part of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, 379 runners – who gained a place in the race by winning a lottery – set off from Olympic Valley, California, before finishing in Auburn, a city in Placer County that is part of the Sacramento metropolitan area.
The first 15 miles of the 100.2-mile course were affected by snowfall, after which runners were confronted by a 16-mile section no longer protected by shade as a result of the devastation of last year’s Mosquito fire. Otherwise, though, conditions were relatively helpful – temperatures were the fifth-lowest in race history and well shy of the 100-degree Farenheit mark (37.7°C) that has become usual.
The clement weather helped the 38-year-old Dauwalter record a mark of 15hr 29min 33sec – a time that beat Ellie Greenwood’s 2012 record by a 78 minutes – one of nine sub-18-hour finishes, a record in the women’s race. Running without a pacemaker, Dauwalter led from start to finish, destroying the field after the halfway point to cross the line almost an hour and 14 minutes clear of Katie Schide, who came second.
Evans, 31, had finished third in 2019, his time of 14:59:44 the fastest recorded by a non-American. For much of this year’s contest, he was accompanied by Dakota Jones, who had cycled the 680 miles from his home in Utah to the race’s start, but dropped his adversary after mile 71.
Jones ended up 17th with Evans crossing the line alone in 14:40:22, the fourth-best time in the race’s history.
