Western States 100 in Three Days: Walmsley, Lichter, and the Deepest Field the Race Has Seen

The elite athletes checking into Olympic Valley this week are looking at a start that is three days away and 100.2 miles long.

The Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run has been held annually since 1977, first as an outgrowth of the Tevis Cup horse race that follows the same Sierra Nevada route from the Tahoe basin to Auburn. In that time it has become the reference point for the global 100-mile trail running circuit — not because its course is necessarily the hardest or the most beautiful, but because its field, its history, and its canyon heat have produced a reliability of test that makes the results legible across eras and athletes. Who wins Western States, and in what time, means something the sport has agreed to take seriously.

The 2026 field is, by most measures, the deepest in the race's history.

The Men's Race

Jim Walmsley holds the course record: 14:09:32, run in 2019. He has won four times — 2018, 2019, 2021, 2024 — and arrives in Olympic Valley this year via a sponsor spot, with a persistent knee issue from 2024 acknowledged but managed through the winter. He is the men's favorite in the way that a four-time champion of any sporting event is the favorite: by demonstrated capability under the specific conditions that matter. Western States' net-downhill course rewards the sustained power output and technical descending that Walmsley has built his career around.

Whether the knee is where it needs to be for a fifth title will not be known until somewhere in the American River Canyon on Saturday night.

Kilian Jornet is an anomaly in the Western States field. He won this race in 2011, fifteen years ago, when the course and the conversation around it were different. He finished third in 2025. He is 38 years old. He has won world titles in mountain running, ski mountaineering, and vertical disciplines that most runners don't attempt. He treats races as training references and treats training as a way of life. An event he has podium'd twice in — separated by 14 years — is not an event he has finished thinking about.

Adam Peterman won this race in 2022 on his 100-mile debut, running sub-15 hours in a field that included multiple previous champions. He is in his mid-twenties and has been building the kind of volume that suggests the 2022 performance was a foundation rather than a ceiling.

Francesco Puppi, the Italian, is making his 100-mile debut here. He has run strong results at shorter distances and the course — long, technical, with sustained descending — suits the profile he has developed. 100-mile debuts are the part of Western States where the projection work stops and the actual work begins. Puppi's fitness coming in is not in question; the unknown is the distance.

The Women's Race

Jennifer Lichter enters as the likely favorite on the strength of what she did at the Black Canyon 100k in February 2026: a course record in a field that included Abby Hall, Molly Seidel, and other Western States contenders. A course record in a race that stacked is not a preview result. It is a result.

Lichter's preparation through the spring has stayed at altitude and on technical terrain. The translation from Black Canyon's profile to Western States' canyons is not automatic — the heat loading in the American River sections is a different kind of difficulty than anything a winter desert race offers — but her aerobic base coming in is the strongest it has been.

Abby Hall won this race in 2025 and has finished second twice previously. Four appearances; four podiums. The consistency is its own argument. Hall knows the course in a way that includes not just the topography but the tactical decisions — when to push in the canyons, how much to hold at Foresthill, what the climb out of the American River ford actually costs at mile 78. That knowledge is hard to acquire and she has it.

Molly Seidel won the Olympic marathon bronze in Tokyo in 2020 and has spent the years since navigating a series of setbacks that have limited her road race access. The move to ultra distances is not unprecedented for an athlete with her aerobic base, but this is a debut at 100 miles and a debut specifically at Western States, which is the version of that distance that includes 22,000+ feet of descent, technical canyon running, and temperatures that can exceed 90°F in the American River sections. Seidel's road-running engine is credentialed. The question is whether June 27 is the day that engine translates to this distance and this terrain.

Fu-Zhao Xiang has finished second at Western States twice. Two-time second place in a race with this field is a career result that deserves recognition as such; it also means she has arrived at the finish with the canyon heat behind her and knows what the last twenty miles of this course asks for.

Martyna Młynarczyk, the 2025 CCC champion, returns after withdrawing from this race in a prior year. She arrives with unfinished business at a course where she has demonstrated fitness to compete.

The elite field is in Olympic Valley now. Pre-race week for Western States involves mandatory check-in, medical screening, and the particular silence that settles over athletes who know exactly what Saturday's dawn is going to ask of them. The Village at Palisades Tahoe has the compressed, purposeful energy of a race hotel at altitude — athletes eating precisely, resting carefully, walking slowly between buildings to conserve what the race will cost.

The course has been marked. Silt has been assessed on the river crossing at Rucky Chucky. Aid station captains have confirmed their stations. The 1,500+ volunteers who make Western States operational are staged across 100.2 miles from the ski resort to the finish track.

Saturday at 05:00, the start gun goes.

For a guide to the course itself — the key checkpoints, the canyon sections, how to crew and pace, and where to base for the race — see our Western States 100 course guide. For live results, iRunFar publishes continuous text and photo coverage from the start.