The 2026 Western States Endurance Run, which heads from Olympic Valley to Auburn on 27-28 June, has produced what longtime observers are calling the deepest men's field in the race's 51-year history. With both 2025 podium finishers Caleb Olson and Chris Myers stepping back from the distance — Olson to focus on a UTMB tilt, Myers to defend his Mt. Fuji 100 title — the door is open for a new winner, and the men's start list, locked in this week ahead of the 8 May media call, is rich with athletes who could plausibly win.
Kilian Jornet headlines, as he must. The 38-year-old Catalan, third here in 2025 and the 2011 champion, returns having spent the late winter on a four-week heat block in Death Valley and a recent training stint with the NN Running Team's road-marathon squad in Iten. Jornet has indicated to Spanish outlet Sport that his goal is "to win, and to come back fast enough to UTMB" on 28 August — a 62-day double that would be tough on a 25-year-old, let alone a man entering his fourth decade. His pacing strategy, his crew has hinted, will be a deliberate slow start through Robinson Flat to bank cooling capacity for the canyons.
The chasing pack starts with the European challenge. Italy's Francesco Puppi, 34, took the 2025 CCC and has emerged from the off-season looking sharper than ever, recently winning the Madeira Island Ultra-Trail's preview 50K in March. Frenchman Thomas Cardin, the 2024 Mont Blanc Marathon champion, has earned his first Western States start through a Chianti 120K Golden Ticket and brings short-course speed unmatched in the field. And Vincent Bouillard, the 2024 UTMB champion, has the resume but, like Jornet in 2010, will be making his Western States debut on a course he has not previously run.
The American depth, after a thin few years, has finally returned. David Roche, who set a course record at Leadville last summer, is on the start list and will draw the largest American crew. Daniel Jones, fifth here in 2024, returns. Vermont's Adam Peterman, who took the Canyons 100K Golden Ticket last weekend in California, brings Western States winning form from 2022 — when he was the youngest male champion since 1988 — and a year of base-mileage health that he had not had in either 2024 or 2025. Hayden Hawks, second at Canyons, is also entered, though he has confirmed he will fly to Pikes Peak immediately afterwards for a UTMB qualifier.
Heat will, as ever, be the wildcard. The 1986 record book reads heavy with cool-year times, and Jim Walmsley's 14:09:28 men's course record from 2019 has stood through six much hotter editions since. Long-range modelling from the Western States meteorology team, who have produced a forecast paper for race week every June since 2010, indicates a 60 percent chance of canyon temperatures above 38°C — a number that would compress the race towards experienced campaigners over speedier debutants. Whoever wins, they will need to have run the canyons before in their head before they reach Devil's Thumb at mile 47.8.