The 2026 Grand Raid Ventoux by UTMB closed in Malaucène on Sunday with one of the most popular wins of the trail season so far, as the British veteran Andy Symonds, 44, took the 125-kilometre Ultra Géant de Provence in 13 hours 7 minutes, 17 minutes ahead of France's Sébastien Ferrari and 35 ahead of compatriot Damien Poesy. Jennifer Lemoine, the Vosges-based French marathoner-turned-mountain-runner, won the women's 125k in 16:01, denying a strong Italian challenge from defending champion Federica Boifava. Across the four distances, nearly 4,000 runners from 39 nations finished the second-edition UTMB World Series race that has rapidly become Provence's flagship spring event.
Symonds, who was a Salomon team marathoner at the 2009 Boston Marathon before turning to the mountains in 2014, is now in his twelfth year of ultra racing and looked spent at the bottom of the long Mont Serein climb at 90 kilometres. Cameras tracking the race watched him grind back into Ferrari over the closed-road descent into Bédoin and then ride out the final 12 kilometres of fire road into Malaucène with a steady, late-career economy. "I run from a base of being tired now," Symonds said at the finish. "I don't have many days where I feel sharp, but I don't have many days where I fall apart either."
The 87-kilometre Grande Épopée Ventoux was the breakout event of the weekend, with Baptiste Chassagne — best known on the road as a sub-2:11 marathoner — translating his speed onto Mont Ventoux's chalky shoulders to win in 8:00:24. Ida-Sophie Hegemann, the German national skyrunning champion, sealed the women's title in 10:00:29 ahead of Italy's Martina Brambilla. The 51-kilometre Mistral Marathon Trail went to Kenya's Nashon Kiplimo in a course record 3:58:50, the first time a Kenyan elite has won at a French UTMB World Series race, while the 26-kilometre Trail des Coteaux titles went to France's Frédéric Tranchand and Élise Poncet.
For UTMB World Series points, the weekend was particularly significant on the women's 125k side. Lemoine's win earns her a Running Stone for the OCC at Chamonix in August and she also banks crucial UTMB Index ranking points ahead of the European championship rounds in May. Boifava drops to second in the European Cup standings but holds onto her qualifying place for the UTMB Mont-Blanc CCC. The men's 125k Running Stone goes to Symonds, his first UTMB Mont-Blanc qualifying ticket since he ran the OCC in 2018.
The Géant de Provence finishing area looked nothing like its modest 2024 inaugural edition. Malaucène village square, restored after the 2024 winter storms, hosted a 14-hour live broadcast on UTMB Live, with the second-edition turnout doubling the original 2,000-runner field and runners from Korea, Japan, the United States and Australia all making their European spring debut on the course. UTMB CEO Frédéric Lénart, attending in person, told reporters that the event "is now a stage we cannot lose" and that the 2027 edition will likely add a 175-kilometre option to keep pace with demand. The European trail season now turns to Penyagolosa next weekend and the Zegama-Aizkorri sky race on 24 May.