Two months out from the 53rd running of the Western States Endurance Run, the women's start list is shaping up as the deepest in the race's history. Every athlete who finished in the top ten at Olympic Valley last year has accepted her automatic invitation to return — a first for the women's race since the entrants list became public — and the 2025 podium of Abby Hall, Eszter Csillag and Tara Dower will line up together once more on the snow-stripped Escarpment shortly before dawn on Saturday 27 June.
Hall, the defending champion, ran 16:18 last June to win her first Western States in her sixth attempt and to lower her own course record from 2024 by just over four minutes. The Colorado-based runner has barely raced since, choosing to skip both the European spring trail series and the recent Canyons by UTMB 100k, and her training partners have hinted at a focused Western States build with one tune-up at the Lake Sonoma 50 in late May. "She doesn't need a golden ticket and she doesn't need to chase anything before June," her coach David Roche said in a recent podcast appearance. "The plan is the plan."
The challenge to Hall is wide and unusually international. Hong Kong's Eszter Csillag returns after her 16:42 second place last year and is fresh off a course record at the Hong Kong 100 in February. Tara Dower brings momentum from her March golden ticket win at Black Canyon, and three further automatic qualifiers — Norway's Yngvild Kaspersen, Poland's Martyna Mlynarczyk and the United States' own Riley Brady, who picked up the Canyons 100k golden ticket on Saturday with a 9:41 win — give the front of the field a depth that feels closer to a UTMB Mont-Blanc start list than a typical American 100-miler.
Sub-plots to watch include the return of Courtney Dauwalter, who has been entered as a special invite after sitting out the past two seasons with a tibial stress reaction, and the Western States debut of Sweden's reigning short trail world champion Tove Alexandersson — who used Sunday's Mistral Marathon Trail 51k win in 4:30 as a tune-up before relocating to Auburn for two months of altitude work in mid-May. Alexandersson is unproven beyond 60 km but has been consistently the fastest woman on technical terrain in the world for nearly a decade, and her arrival has shifted the betting market more than any other entrant since the lottery draw in December.
The race itself returns to its full traditional course after last year's Squaw Peak detour, with snow levels currently sitting at roughly 70% of the long-term average for late April. Race director Craig Thornley confirmed in last week's official update that no course modifications are anticipated and that crewing access at Robinson Flat, Foresthill and the Rucky Chucky river crossing will follow the standard footprint. With the field now locked, the next significant date is the women's medical screening week beginning 22 May. Until then, the only certainty is that Western States 2026 has the depth to make 16 hours look slow rather than historic.