Swiss Athlete Finishes 4,200-Kilometer Run for Ukraine in Lviv

Frédéric Splendore ran the last of 4,200 kilometers (2,610 miles) on Monday morning and stopped at a military cemetery in Lviv, finishing a charity run for Ukraine that began in Monaco on July 24.

The final stage started at 7 a.m. in Bryukhovychi, on the edge of the city, where runners from around the Lviv region turned out to take him through the last 12 kilometers (7.5 miles). Maksym Kozytskyi, head of the Lviv regional military administration, was waiting at the Field of Honorary Burials, the section of Lychakiv Cemetery given over to Ukraine’s war dead. The two of them stood for a moment of silence and laid flowers on the graves.

“Frédéric has done incredible work for Ukraine,” Kozytskyi said in Ukrainian at the graveside, in remarks released by his administration. “He covered 4,200 kilometers to tell Europe that we are still fighting to be Ukrainians.”

Splendore calls the project Beyond Borders. He had Sept. 21, the International Day of Peace, marked as his arrival date well before he set off, and he crossed 13 countries to keep the appointment.

The middle 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) were the hard part. Splendore crossed the Alps on the Via Alpina from Monaco to Muggia, outside Trieste, in 23 days, 11 hours and 42 minutes with about 103,600 meters (340,000 feet) of climbing, the fastest known time for the route. He reached the Adriatic on Aug. 16, taking the record off Sophie Woods of New Zealand, who had held it barely two weeks after running the route the other way and finishing in Monaco on Aug. 1.

What followed was flatter without being flat. Another 30,000 meters (98,000 feet) of climbing was spread across the final 2,200 kilometers (1,367 miles), run mostly on roads at 70 to 100 kilometers (43 to 62 miles) on the longer days, with a support crew alongside in a camper van.

Splendore, 33, is a professional firefighter in Lausanne, and he is quick on the road as well as long on it. He ran 2:23:04 at the Berlin Marathon last September and won the Swiss 100K championship in 2023 in 7:14, the first time he had raced the distance. The ultra distances are not new to him either. In 2018 he hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, roughly 4,300 kilometers (2,670 miles) from Mexico to Canada, in 116 days with his own supplies on his back. “I wanted to use my passion, my sport, to make something meaningful,” he told iRunFar.

The €140,000 ($160,600) target is pegged to the mountains. Splendore priced every meter of ascent on his route at a euro, and the route holds roughly 140,000 of them. The money goes to Swiss Solidarity through Au-delà de l’Effort, the association behind the run, which promises that at least 95 percent of it reaches the work itself: housing repairs, medical aid, and help for Ukrainians who have had to move elsewhere inside their own country. Mezha reported the appeal at €6,379 ($7,300) as of Sept. 18, three days before the finish.

Splendore and the camper van were headed for Kyiv on Monday afternoon and a visit to Maidan Nezalezhnosti, before the team leaves Ukraine on Sept. 22.