The Spanish runner hopes to confirm his good season 2022 by winning the most prestigious ultra trail of the planet. Answer this August 27.
Pau Capell lives again in 2022. The Spaniard is coming back from two difficult seasons. In 2020, like most runners, the Private Sport Shop ambassador was forced to endure the successive cancellations of the season's main races due to the epidemic. This made it impossible for him to put his title back on the line, acquired when he won the UTMB in 2019. But Capell came up with the idea of running the trails around Mont-Blanc anyway, in a bid to set a course record. The film below (entitled "Breaking 20") looks back at this solo project.
A few hours after this abortive attempt, the Spaniard admitted that he had perhaps mismanaged the start of his journey. "It was the state of my legs at Praz de Fort (km 120), in Switzerland, that made me realize that I had perhaps pushed too hard in the first 80 kilometers. I was ten minutes ahead of my projections at the start of the route. I paid for it, it was a mistake, even if I thought I was capable of running at that speed at the time. In truth, if I could change just one thing about the course of this project it would be this: I'd start more slowly."
Even if he finally failed to break the record in 2020, Pau Capell has never given up on the idea of returning to this legendary race and making his mark on it. Unfortunately, the year 2021 was fraught with difficulties for the Spanish ultra-trail runner, who had to contend with numerous injuries. He underwent surgery on a meniscus in July 2021, and was never able to get back into the shape he needed to perform well on the UTMB. Cautious, he even opted to withdraw a few days before the start of the event.
So 2022 sounded like a return to form for the Spanish rider. As he does every year, at the start of the season he unveiled a packed program of 12 races, two training camps and a personal challenge on the GR221 in Mallorca, to round off 2022. A season format identical to the one he achieved in 2019 during his best year in competition. And proving that Capell is off to a good start this season, he first of all signed a promising second place behind Pablo Villa in his first competition on the Transgrancanaria (128 km) before winning the 100-mile Patagonia Run in Argentina.
Capell then kept his form up and maintained a high level of performance, with a full month of July featuring two victories in one week, over shorter distances in preparation for the UTMB. The Spaniard dominated both events in France, firstly winning the 50 km Côte-d'Azur-Mercantour Ultra-trail (finishing 33 minutes ahead of his runner-up, Frenchman Thibault Athane), before taking another victory a few days later in the first edition of the Ultra trail Sud Canigou.
"The Ultra trail Sud Canigou race was fun and the course really cool," he explained after his victory on his Instagram account. "I never stopped because the competition was strong with Theo Detienne (second in the event). I ran at a similar pace to what I'll be doing on the UTMB. That was the plan. I was with Theo until the 55th kilometer before I put in an attack and finished alone." Now it's off to the UTMB, where the competition will obviously be stronger, but where the Spaniard will be one of the favourites.