M20-39 Ascent: Cameron Smith takes the win, but the podium reshuffles late

• Cameron Smith, 38:09 — wins the M20-39 Ascent at 10:34/mi, posting the fastest split on the KT 22→Finish segment to close it out; he also finished 2nd in the M20-39 Ascent at this same event previously.
• Casey Campbell's closing surge — entered the final stretch in 4th, ran the second-fastest KT 22→Finish split in the field, and vaulted to 3rd (38:56) ahead of Meikael Beaudoin-Rousseau (39:06), who had held 3rd but faded to 4th with the fourth-fastest closing split.
• Top-five compression — just 99 seconds separated Smith from 5th-place Kieran Nay (39:48), with Christian Allen (38:29) and Campbell (38:56) sandwiched tightly in between.
• Noah Williams — 8th in M20-39 at 41:09, having also finished 2nd in the Men's 46K at this same event — a remarkable double across two races at Broken Arrow 2026.

Cameron Smith came to Palisades, Tahoe with unfinished business. Having finished 2nd in this field at a prior edition of the Ascent, he converted that experience into a wire-to-wire men's lead — holding 1st from start to finish — and sealed it with the fastest closing split on the KT 22→Finish stretch. At 10:34/mi across high-altitude terrain ranging up to nearly 8,845 feet, that's a controlled, purposeful performance. Christian Allen ran him close throughout, finishing 2nd in 38:29 with the third-fastest closing split, never quite bridging the 20-second gap.

The real drama in the final segment was one place back. Meikael Beaudoin-Rousseau had held 3rd through most of the race, but Casey Campbell — running the second-fastest KT 22→Finish split in the entire M20-39 field — came storming through to claim 3rd in 38:56. Beaudoin-Rousseau crossed in 39:06, just ten seconds behind, having run the fourth-fastest closing split; faster than nearly everyone else, but not faster than Campbell when it counted. Kieran Nay rounded out the top five in 39:48, with Jeret Gillingham (40:02) and Grant Colligan (40:18) completing a densely packed upper tier.

Worth a separate mention: Noah Williams (41:09, 8th) had already raced the Men's 46K at this event, finishing 2nd there before lining up for the Ascent. That kind of back-to-back effort across two different races at Broken Arrow 2026 — and still finishing in the top ten of a competitive M20-39 field — is one of the weekend's standout stories.