Will Killian Jornet win Western States for 1st time since 2011?

Probably not but I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up in the top 5.

Everest: If nothing else, in 2023 he went back to Everest, this time from the south side and he didn't make it. Why would you come back, if you made it already two times?

Fun fact, I saw him running on the bottom of the hill towards Tengpoche.

Deeply ironic that Rojo quotes this ridiculous, anonymous, full-of-errors diatribe as if it's important. That's LRC and its founders in a nutshell.

There is no definitive proof that he did or didn't summit Everest. No one except trolls care. One guy was on a jihad to prove Jornet was lying, and a marathon investigation-cited report said he had summited. Again, no definitive proof either way, and we moved on.

His "proven to cheat and cut courses" is silly. Yes, he did cut some switchbacks at a US trail race like 15 years ago (think it was Speedgoat), but, guess what, cutting switchbacks is legal in Europe so it's not hard to imagine that it was second-nature to him, especially as a young athlete. He was DQd and didn't fight it. Wasn't the first European trail runner to be DQ'd in the US for that. To make it sound like he does this regularly or that it casts suspicion on all of his running accomplishments is stupid.

He didn't get dropped by Salomon. He left to start his own company, NNormal. This happened in 2021. The Everest controversy was in 2017 or 2018. Stupid comment by that redditer.

JFC Rojo is it possible for you to write a post that isn’t riddled with typos?

my god people are stupid

I did my research when Everest stuff was hot on this site, and I think it was legit.

The thing that people were pointing to, the GPS track that was sparse and all over the place, had that exact pattern on most of the other Strava segment top-10 on the top portion of that side of the mountain. If you disbelieve Kilian's GPS tracks, you'd have to disbelieve most of the rest of that top-10, and most of those people weren't trying to set any kind of record.

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=12217338&page=3#post-65

Agreed. Killian isn’t an attention seeking wh*re like David Roche, so I’m incredibly likely to believe his claims

I have no idea about the Everest stuff, but the idea that his sponsors dropped him is nonsense. He started his own shoe brand and is doing very well with it. And he’s sponsored by Maurten and Coros.

Love to see Killian win. It'll be a fun race to watch.

It's going come down to Caleb Olson, Adam Peterman, Rod Farvard, Dan Jones and maybe that euro dude who got second at CCC last year(haven't heard anything about him leading up to states). Jeff Mogavero has a good shot too, putting in 160 mile weeks in the mountains like prime jim walmsley/anton did.

Are Norwegians at a disadvantage in this race? I seriously think Jon Albon could’ve won western states if he trained in a place with altitude and heat. Kilian is at a disadvantage with no training camp. I still think he should be the favorite.

I don't think it's the altitude, but the type of trails they train on. While they got mountains to train on, it's short and steep. So more inclined for the terrain for utmb/ccc. Training in Flagstaff, where you can trash your legs on more run able long declines/inclines will definitely better prepare the legs better for western states. Just look at the list of the top 10 fastest times. Mostly from runners training out of Arizona, Utah or California.

True story that I heard at TRE from a pro- Salomon was paying Kilian $30,000 euro for over a decade and Kilian finally said enough is enough. Thus, his own brand. All the while, Courtney Daulwalter signed to a six figure “lifetime contract” with Salomon.

IIRC - the problems with Killian's claim of a a fastest ever Everest summit in the middle of the night in awful weather conditions were as follows

1) No independent verification from climbing partner or base camp spotters

2) Incomplete and erratic GPS track

3) Photo of summit was just a Killian selfie in the pitch black with no landmarks

4) Weather conditions made summitting in the middle of the night highly unlikely if not impossible

5) Another climbing party saw/passed Killian at a spot on the mountain that made his timeline impossible

The charitable consensus from all of this is that even if Killian actually made the climb he had no independent proof and thus no claim to a record.

$30,000 that's much less than I expected with him.

I suspect you’re missing a zero. Kilian is doing just fine financially. He chooses whether to sponsor you at this stage of his career, not the other way around.

Like your punctuation!

I agree with this take. I don’t think Kilian will win and I think there’s a lot of prepared men this year. People are sleeping on Adam Peterman but I’ll be cheering for Rod to win it, though I do think that’s a long shot too

Rojo you could have at least read the rest of the reddit thread where commenters were saying this comment was flat out false. But hey, whatever gets you clicks!

The consensus about Everest is that there is no definitive proof either way.

The consensus about the 82 alpine 4000m+ summits in 19days during summer 2024, the 11 Zegama Aizkori (last of which in 2024),10 Sierre-Zinal (last of which in 2024) and 4 UTMB victories is that they are fully legit, and completely verifiable.

I somehow know to who I am willing to let the benefit of the doubt. And I cannot count Kilian out of the favorites for western states due to his 2024 achievements, because they are far removed from a 100 miles trail effort, but on both sides of the spectrum, and all world class level.