Men's CCC: Remy Brassac Hunts Down the Lead and Never Lets Go

• Brassac wins in 19:28:48 (12:58/mi), finishing 45:43 ahead of runner-up Pierre-Adrien Hivert — a commanding margin on 145 km of Alpine terrain.
• Hivert's late charge: running from 11th at the first checkpoint all the way to 2nd by the finish, including the fastest men's split on the Hauteluce→Barrage de la Girotte segment.
• Nicolas Court and Paul Creuzet closed fastest: Court (3rd, 20:56:57) and Creuzet (4th, 21:12:08) posted the two fastest men's splits on the Bellevue→Les Houches final stretch — a blistering late push through the mountains.
• 629 men finished the most technical race of UTMB week, from a night start in Courmayeur to the finish in Chamonix.

Remy Brassac, 39, ran a patient and precise race. He left Courmayeur at 23:50 sitting in 2nd, slipped briefly to 3rd, then rebuilt his position methodically — returning to 2nd and holding there through the heart of the course before seizing the lead and never releasing it. The decisive moment came on the Cormet de Roselend→La Gittaz segment, where he posted the fastest men's split of anyone in the field. By the time the race reached its closing stages, the gap was irreversible. Nineteen hours and twenty-eight minutes after the start, Brassac crossed into Chamonix as the men's champion.

The race for 2nd was one of the great stories of the day. Pierre-Adrien Hivert, 31, was buried in 11th at the first check and still 9th at the second. But he was moving. Steadily, checkpoint by checkpoint — 6th, 4th, then 2nd — Hivert climbed through the field with relentless forward momentum, his fastest-men's-split on Hauteluce→Barrage de la Girotte evidence of where he found his biggest gains. He finished in 20:14:31, more than 40 minutes clear of 3rd.

Behind them, the battle for the podium was fierce and fast. Nicolas Court, 30, came home in 20:56:57 after a strong back half — he was 14th as late as the fifth checkpoint before surging to 3rd. Paul Creuzet, 27, mirrored that trajectory, moving from 12th to 4th with the 2nd-fastest Bellevue→Les Houches split in the men's field. Davide Rivero, 33, deserves a mention for finishing 6th overall in 20:42:48 — a time that would have placed him ahead of Court and Creuzet, though his checkpoint progression data tells a different story of how the race was run. Adrien Jacques rounded out the top five in 21:22:12, adding the 2nd-fastest men's split on La Gittaz→Entre deux Nants for good measure.