F55-59 at UTMB: Viliuniene climbs through the field to claim the title

• Rima Viliuniene wins in 36:03:42 (20:01/mi), finishing over an hour ahead of runner-up Sunyeon Lee (37:09:48).
• Tightest battle of the day: Lee and Marialuisa Tagliapietra were separated by just 5 minutes 25 seconds at the line — 37:09:48 vs. 37:15:13 — after both ran the back half of the course within striking distance of each other.
• Viliuniene's surge: she entered the women's field at 277th among women at the first checkpoint and climbed all the way to 96th by the finish — a relentless, race-long move through the field.
• Full field finishes: all 15 starters in F55-59 crossed the line in Chamonix, with Pascaline Joly completing the 174 km loop in 45:29:18 — just one minute and 12 seconds inside the 45h 30min cutoff.

Rima Viliuniene, 55, did not arrive at the front of F55-59 quickly — she built there, checkpoint by checkpoint, across the full arc of one of ultrarunning's most demanding courses. Starting deep in the women's field at 277th, she was still 214th at the second checkpoint, 177th at the third, and 145th at the fourth. But by the fifth check she had cracked the top 110 among women, and she finished 96th. That kind of sustained forward motion over 36 hours and change, through 9,700 meters of elevation gain and the thin air above 8,000 feet, is not a sprint finish — it is a complete race executed from start to line.

Behind her, the battle for second and third was genuinely close. Sunyeon Lee, 56, ran a measured race, holding a consistent position in the women's field from checkpoint one through the finish and posting the 61st-fastest women's split on the Vallorcine Sortie→La Flégère segment. Marialuisa Tagliapietra, 59, came from further back — 230th among women at the first check — and clawed forward to 110th by the finish, logging the 65th-fastest women's split on the La Flégère→Finish leg. That late push nearly caught Lee, but 5:25 held at the line. Sigríður Rúna Þóroddsdóttir rounded out the podium group in 4th at 38:00:20, herself a strong mover from 324th among women at the opening check all the way to 119th at the finish.

The back of the field told its own story of perseverance. Fátima Gonçalves (5th, 40:59:12) and Susan Lang (6th, 41:27:05) were separated by under 28 minutes, while Sandrine Gippa (7th, 42:37:02) and Susana Zarraluqui Guillén (8th, 42:43:07) finished just six minutes apart. At the very back, Aurelia Rondole (13th, 45:21:35), Raffaella Bonetti (14th, 45:25:07), and Pascaline Joly (15th, 45:29:18) came home within eight minutes of each other — and all three within the cutoff. Fifteen started, fifteen finished. Around the entire Mont-Blanc massif.