American David Sinclair turned the 2026 Transvulcania Ultramarathon into a course-record demolition on Saturday, ripping nearly nineteen minutes off the previous La Palma 73km mark with a 6:33:24 winning time. The Craft-sponsored New Englander front-loaded the race on the volcanic spine of Cumbre Vieja, opened a margin in the technical descents off El Time, and then refused to surrender it on the long sea-front kick into Tazacorte. Petter Engdahl of Sweden held second through the closing kilometres, with Italy's Nadir Maguet completing the podium in third.
Sinclair's race effectively turned at the Roque de los Muchachos summit, where he was already pulling clear of a chase pack that had spent the early kilometres feeling out the heat under a cloudless La Palma sky. From the top of the volcano he descended hard through the pine-needle switchbacks above El Pilar, accepting the risk of cramping later in the day in exchange for a buffer that would prove decisive on the punishing 2,000 metres of negative drop into the Atlantic. By the final climb out of Tazacorte the gap was close to fifteen minutes and the only question was the size of the new course-record margin.
France's Blandine L'Hirondel produced what her own coaching team described afterwards as a 'perfect race' to take the women's title and her own course record. The KIPRUN-supported runner moved to the front before the half-way checkpoint, controlled the long altitude traverse with the metronomic pacing that has become her signature, and never gave back the lead on the descents that have undone past contenders. Maite Maiora of Spain ran the smartest race of the chase pack to finish second, with Russian Ekaterina Mityaeva taking third in a year that returned her to the global trail circuit at full strength.
The men's record had stood since 2014 and the women's mark since 2018, which made the simultaneous resetting of both standards the kind of generational moment that only happens at long-established Skyrunner World Series classics on rare days of perfect weather and deep fields. Race director Yon Lalanne pointed to a near-record turnout of more than 1,800 finishers across the Ultra, Marathon, Half and Vertical Kilometre disciplines as evidence that the 2026 weekend was the strongest yet for the event in its modern format. Live tracking on the LiveTrail platform held up across the day despite the surge in international viewers.
The Transvulcania weekend doubled as the second leg of the WMRA Mountain Running World Cup, with Joyce Njeru and Richard Atuya taking the Vertical Kilometre on Thursday and tightening their grip on the season standings. With the Sinclair and L'Hirondel headlines now in the books, attention shifts quickly to the next major Skyrunning fixture and to L'Hirondel's continued build towards the Western States 100 in late June. Sinclair, for his part, is expected to keep his 2026 calendar light after such an aggressive opener and use the long summer to rebuild before another tilt at UTMB.