Your Guide to the 2026 Sierre-Zinal, the Race of the Five 4,000s

Few races pack as much prestige into a single morning as Sierre-Zinal. The 53rd edition of the Swiss classic, nicknamed the Race of the Five 4,000s, runs on Saturday, August 8, sending one of the deepest mountain-running fields of the year up and over the Valais Alps. It counts toward both the Golden Trail World Series and the Mountain Running World Cup, which is why the start list reads like a who’s who of the sport. The elite women set off at 10:30 a.m. local time and the men 30 minutes later, and by early afternoon there should be two new champions in Zinal.

The Course

Sierre-Zinal is a 31-kilometer (19.3-mile) point-to-point race that starts in the town of Sierre, at 573 meters, and finishes in the mountain village of Zinal, at 1,673 meters. It is a climber’s course first and a descender’s course last: the route gains 2,200 meters (about 7,200 feet) and loses 1,100 meters (3,600 feet), with much of that drop packed into a final 7 kilometers that plunges some 750 meters into Zinal. The nickname comes from the five 4,000-meter peaks that loom over the trail, the Weisshorn, Zinalrothorn, Obergabelhorn, Matterhorn, and Dent Blanche.

The records here are old and fast. On the men’s side, Kilian Jornet set the mark of 2:25:34 in 2024. The women’s record is even more entrenched: Switzerland’s Maude Mathys ran 2:49:20 back in 2019, and no one has come within three minutes of it since. Winners earn 2,000 Swiss francs (about $2,475), with prize money paid 10 deep and time bonuses that push the champion’s payout higher. A new course record is worth a bonus of its own, 4,000 francs for the men and 8,000 for the women.

How to Watch

The women start at 10:30 a.m. and the men at 11:00 a.m. Central European Summer Time. For viewers elsewhere, the women’s gun is roughly 9:30 a.m. in the UK, 4:30 a.m. on the U.S. East Coast, and 1:30 a.m. on the West Coast, with the men off 30 minutes later. Because the women race first and finish in similar times, they are likely to cross the line in Zinal before the men do.

The race is carried in more than 100 countries. Broadcasters and platforms include Eurosport, TNT Sports, Max, discovery+, Switzerland’s SSR, and Canal 9, with a replay posted to YouTube afterward. The trail-running site iRunFar is also providing live English-language coverage from the course.

The Men’s Race

Kenya owns this race right now, and it is led by defending champion Philemon Kiriago, a two-time winner who is the second-fastest man in Sierre-Zinal history and has never finished worse than second in three starts. In 2024 he lost to Jornet by a single second during the Norwegian’s record run. He heads a Kenyan contingent that swept the podium in 2025, with runner-up Patrick Kipngeno, an uphill specialist, and third-place Michael Selelo Saoli both back. In fact, every man who finished in last year’s top 10 returns.

The biggest threat to a Kenyan repeat may be Morocco’s Elhousine Elazzaoui, who has been nearly unbeatable in Golden Trail races that aren’t named Sierre-Zinal and will be looking to finally crack the code here. Watch, too, for Switzerland’s Adrien Briffod, a 2024 Olympic triathlete who led much of last year’s race before fading on the descent, Sweden’s Petter Engdahl, Italy’s Daniel Pattis, and fellow Kenyan Samwel Kiprotich, who beat several of these names to win the Quebec Mega Trail earlier this summer. The top American is likely to be Taylor Stack, while Italy’s Francesco Puppi arrives fresh off a runner-up finish at the Western States 100. One name missing is Jornet himself: the record holder was entered but withdrew after an injury cut short his Western States, which dims the odds of a men’s course record this year.

The Women’s Race

The women’s field is just as loaded. Kenya’s Caroline Kimutai is the defending champion, though her 2025 win came in unusual fashion. She was awarded the victory after first-across-the-line Joyline Chepngeno was disqualified following a doping ban. Kimutai will try to make it a clean repeat against the most decorated woman in the field, Switzerland’s Maude Mathys, a four-time champion and the course-record holder who finished third last year.

The runner many will tip is Romania’s Mădălina Florea, a Golden Trail standout who has been superb in 2026, with wins at the Broken Arrow 23k, the Quebec Mega Trail, and Pitz Alpine Glacier Trail, but who has never quite cracked Sierre-Zinal. Spain’s Sara Alonso, Switzerland’s Judith Wyder, Kenya’s Ruth Gitonga, China’s Miao Yao, Germany’s Laura Hottenrott, and the returning Dutch star Nienke Brinkman all belong in the conversation, as does 2023 champion Sophia Laukli of the United States if she is in form. There is a curiosity in the field too: South Africa’s Gerda Steyn, a multiple Comrades and Two Oceans champion, is a road-and-ultra great making a rare mountain-trail appearance. Kenyan women have won each of the last two editions, and the question is whether Florea or Mathys can stop a third.

What to Watch For

With Jornet absent, the men’s course record looks safe, so the story there is whether Kiriago can hold off Elazzaoui and a chasing Kenyan pack, or whether the win comes down to the brutal final descent, where climbers and downhill specialists have traded the lead before. On the women’s side, Mathys’s 2019 record has stood the test of time, and the race doubles as a marker in the Golden Trail and World Cup standings. The doping shadow lingers, too, after last year’s disqualification and an ongoing debate about whether trail running’s drug testing has kept pace with its prize money. All of it gets sorted out on the climb to Zinal on Saturday.