Jim Walmsley Withdraws From UTMB, Leaving the Race Without Its Two Top-Rated Men

Jim Walmsley has withdrawn from the UTMB 100-miler with a knee injury, his representatives confirmed to Marathon Handbook on Friday, taking the highest-rated man in the field out of the race a week before it starts. Kelsey Bardach, associate PR director at RYGR, confirmed it by email.

The race leaves Chamonix on Aug. 28 and covers 174 kilometers (about 108 miles) with 9,900 meters (about 32,500 feet) of climbing around the Mont Blanc massif. Walmsley canceled his registration on Wednesday, he told Freetrail, and by Thursday he had vanished from the start lists.

Kilian Jornet announced on Thursday that his own knee needs surgery, so the men’s race lost its two highest-rated entrants on the same day. Walmsley’s UTMB Index of 967 was the highest in the field and the third highest in the world. Jornet’s 948 was next, and below them Ben Dhiman and Caleb Olson are level on 946, 21 points behind Walmsley. Tom Evans withdrew on Aug. 13, a year after winning the race, and a foot injury had already ruled Katie Schide out of a race whose women’s record she holds. UTMB has said that 846 elite athletes entered across its races this year, 34 more than in 2025 and from 54 nationalities, and has called the entry “one of the strongest fields in its history.”

He told Freetrail, in a studio interview in Chamonix, that imaging has shown little, that the specialists he has consulted do not agree with one another, and that he is doing neuromuscular retraining for now instead of strength work. “It’s more teaching myself how to not compensate in a way that I’ve been doing for a really long time,” he said. Of the decision itself: “there were enough signs there that I just need to dial back.”

Western States was his only start of 2026. He dropped out on June 27 at the Foresthill aid station, mile 62 of 100. His last finish of any kind was the Long Trail world title at Canfranc on Sept. 27, 2025, in 8:35:11. When UTMB sets off he will have gone 11 months without completing a race.

At the Western States he did not finish, Vincent Bouillard won in 13:46:15, 23 minutes inside the course record Walmsley set in 2019. Walmsley still holds the UTMB men’s record, 19:37:43, from a 2023 victory that was also the first by an American man. Evans ran 19:18:58 to win in 2025, but iRunFar reported that cutting the Pyramides Calcaires section took 20 to 30 minutes off that year’s course, so no record was possible. Walmsley dropped in 2024, ran the OCC in 2025 and is now out of 2026, so his own mark goes untested by him for a third year.

A year ago he came off the same start list and reappeared on the OCC, which he won in 5:00:35 after a storm forced a reroute. This time all three lists lost him at once.

iRunFar’s preview, published Aug. 17, installed Dhiman as favorite ahead of Bouillard, Jonathan Albon and Baptiste Chassagne, and flagged Walmsley in the same piece: “Walmsley might win UTMB this year, but if not healthy, it might be his fourth UTMB drop, too.” Bouillard arrives as the 2024 UTMB winner.

Walmsley told Freetrail that he has applied for an injury deferral to 2027. UTMB does not publish the terms attached to its elite invitations. Its published Direct Access conditions say the organizer offers no “refunds, partial refunds or transfers of registration for future editions,” and that a deferral granted under them is “a deferral of the priority only and is not a transfer of registration,” leaving the runner to cancel and enter again for the following year.