Women's CCC: Vieuille Leads Wire to Wire in a 22-Hour Masterclass

• Sarah Vieuille, 41, wins in 22:08:21 — never relinquishing the lead across all seven tracked checkpoints, and posting the fastest women's split on the Arête du Mont-Favre→Lac Combal segment.
• Alice Meignié closes with a surge, running the fastest women's split on La Gittaz→Entre deux Nants to climb from 4th to 2nd, finishing in 22:30:34 — 22:13 behind Vieuille.
• Alyssa Clark earns 3rd in 22:54:24, posting the fastest women's split on Barrage de la Girotte→Remontée le Signal E — the same segment where Blandine Orsini ran the 2nd-fastest women's split.
• Aurore Dacier's charge from 21st to 4th is the biggest move of the race — a relentless progression through every checkpoint to finish in 23:53:21.

Sarah Vieuille ran this race the way you dream of running it: in front, in control, and never looking over her shoulder. The 41-year-old held the women's lead from the first checkpoint to the finish line in Chamonix, covering 145 km of the most technical terrain UTMB week has to offer at a 14:45/mi average — and she didn't just manage the race, she attacked it, posting the fastest women's split on the Arête du Mont-Favre→Lac Combal segment along the way. In a field of 85 finishers, that kind of dominance is rare.

Alice Meignié spent much of the race in the chase pack — sitting 4th through the middle sections — before a decisive move on the La Gittaz→Entre deux Nants leg, where she ran the fastest women's split of anyone, vaulting to 2nd and holding it to the finish in 22:30:34. Alyssa Clark, 33, was similarly measured early, sitting 6th before steadily climbing to a 22:54:24 third-place finish, fueled by the fastest women's split on the Girotte→Signal E climb. Close behind her, Blandine Orsini ran the 2nd-fastest women's split on that same segment — a genuine duel on that stretch — finishing 5th in 24:07:54.

The race's most dramatic storyline belonged to Aurore Dacier. Starting 21st among women and still 10th at the midpoint, the 31-year-old methodically picked off competitors one by one, reaching 4th place by the final checkpoint and holding it to the line in 23:53:21. That kind of sustained, progressive climb through a field this deep — on a course with 9,500 meters of elevation gain — is not an accident. It's a race plan executed to perfection on one of the hardest nights in trail running.