The adidas TERREX Innsbruck Alpine Trailrun Festival closed its 2026 edition over the May Day bank holiday weekend with a clean American sweep of the headline distance. Cole Campbell of Idaho won the curtain-raising vertical race up Challenger Peak in 30:16 on Thursday, then returned on Saturday to take the 53k in 6:23, becoming the first runner since 2019 to win both the vertical and the festival's mid-distance flagship in the same year. Pollee Brookings of Maine won the women's 53k in 8:17 in a tactical battle on the Nordkette ridge, while Case Vander Ploeg and Lotti Brinks split the 23k titles in 3:19 and 3:35.
Campbell's vertical was the kind of front-end performance the Innsbruck festival is built around — 2,300 feet of climb to the Challenger Peak summit on a free-entry warm-up race that doubles as a UTMB Index field. He sat behind early leader Pascal Egli through the steep wooded section before pulling clear on the rocky upper switchbacks, finishing 38 seconds clear in 30:16. Riley Kies of Sun Valley took the women's vertical in 45:37, also moving into a UTMB Index slot and setting up a busy week for the U.S. women's contingent in Innsbruck.
The Saturday 53k was the longer test, and Campbell answered it. He clocked 6:23 on a course that climbed roughly 3,800 vertical metres and traversed three of the festival's signature ridge segments, putting him 12 minutes clear of second-placed Andreas Reiterer of Italy. Brookings, who had finished fourth at last year's Lavaredo Trail and 12th at the OCC in 2025, controlled the women's 53k from the front-end of the climb out of Igls, opening her decisive gap on the upper Hafelekarspitze descent and finishing in 8:17 over a field that had included two other top-10 OCC finishers. Both winners now move into UTMB stones territory for the autumn series.
The 23k was the festival's most contested race in number terms, with more than 1,400 starters and 1,300 finishers across the steep loop above Mutters and the Patscherkofel descent. Vander Ploeg, a 26-year-old graduate student from Michigan, won in 3:19 with a 90-second buffer over Italian newcomer Marco Sartori. Brinks — one of the unsung German trail talents from the 2025 World Championships qualifying loop — took the women's 23k in 3:35, also clearing the UTMB Index threshold for the K25 Trailhalfmarathon distance. Race officials confirmed entries from 47 countries across the festival's combined distances.
The Innsbruck festival has now grown into one of the spring trail calendar's most reliable launchpads for athletes hoping to land summer UTMB qualifying stones, and the 2026 event sits comfortably alongside Skyrace des Matheysins and Transgrancanaria as the early-May reference points. With Transvulcania five days away and the UTMB World Series moving to its summer European phase from June, the Innsbruck weekend will likely be remembered as the moment Cole Campbell announced his bid for an autumn TDS or CCC start. The festival's K110 Masters of Innsbruck will run as the 100K headline at the same site in late June.