Courtney Dauwalter switches islands for a vineyard and wins the Chianti 120K

Courtney Dauwalter was supposed to be racing on Tenerife on Saturday. The Tenerife Bluetrail by UTMB was cancelled when the weather warnings for the Canary Islands came true, so she booked a flight to Italy, took a late entry under the race's policy, and won the Chianti Ultra Trail by UTMB 120K instead. It was her first race of 2026.

The course starts and finishes in Radda in Chianti, 120 km through the vineyards south of Florence with more than 5,200 m of climbing, and the hardest ground is at the end. Dauwalter ran most of the day with Norway's Yngvild Kaspersen and Rachel Entrekin, still together at 87 km. Kaspersen then went clear and had about two minutes on Entrekin with 15 km to go, with Dauwalter a minute further back. The last 15 km include a long descent. Dauwalter went through both of them and finished in 11:31:55, tenth overall, with Kaspersen at 11:33:34 and Entrekin at 11:38:13. Dauwalter's time beat the 2025 winning mark by more than an hour.

Thomas Cardin of France won the men's race in 9:58:38, 70 seconds faster than Jim Walmsley's winning time a year ago, in the longest race he had ever run. Cardin pulled away from Andreas Reiterer and Vincent Bouillard around 87 km and won by more than seven minutes. Reiterer took the sprint for second, 10:06:16 to Bouillard's 10:06:52.

Chianti was a Western States Golden Ticket race. Cardin and Bouillard accepted theirs. On the women's side Kaspersen took one; iRunFar reported that Dauwalter and Entrekin passed, and the second went down the order to Lauren Puretz. Dauwalter's spring target is the Cocodona 250 in May.

Wrong island, right result. The best in the sport is also the most flexible.

Sources: iRunFar; Marathon Handbook; iRunFar.