"The ultra-trail, it goes beyond reason", recognizes François D'Haene

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   gives the floor to a sports actor or actress who is making the news of the moment.

  This week, it's time for the ultra-traileur François D'Haene.

• The 35-year-old Savoyard rider has scored an unprecedented double Hardrock 100-UTMB this season, two 160 and 171 km ultras only six weeks apart.

• The Team Salomon athlete, a winegrower outside of ultra-trail, tells about his passion, born in adolescence, for his fascinating discipline.

More than ever, François D'Haene flew over the world of ultra-trail this summer.

His perilous challenge to chain, in just six weeks, the Hardrock 100 in the United States (160 km and 10,000 m of elevation gain) and the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (171 km, 10,000 m of D +) has been a triumph.

In an hour-long interview given to

, on October 5 at the Salomon Store in Lyon, the 35-year-old runner, quadruple winner of the UTMB but also of the Diagonale des Fous in Reunion Island (165 km), returned on these new prestigious successes.

Father of three children, the one who now resides in Arêches-Beaufort (Savoie) also tells how he combined his passion for mountain adventure with his activity as a physiotherapist and then as a winegrower in Beaujolais with his wife.

Our dossier on the trail

How did you discover this discipline of ultra-trail, at a time when it was still unknown to the general public?

In 2003, I went to attend the first edition of the UTMB in Chamonix (Haute-Savoie).

I thought to myself: “Wait, guys run for 24 hours, whereas in my athletic club, we are told that the 20 km rides are too hard”.

It's beyond reason and I wanted to follow my instincts and try this awesome thing.

I never wanted to train to perform well on shorter formats.

Ultra-trail was the natural route for me.

I had fun in it right away and felt that my body was made for it.

How can you really turn to such an extreme sport when you're still a teenager?

At 17, with cross country friends, I had fun doing some 70 km transhumance through the Chartreuse massif between Chambéry and Grenoble.

Nobody called it trail running back then.

We ran as long as we could and then we exploded.

We have sometimes taken hypoglycaemia of sick.

But it made us kiff: we put our headlamp in the morning, and forward in the mountains.

I'm not sure I was telling my parents this (smile).

You won your first UTMB at 26 and then the Diagonale des Fous a year later.

We have the feeling that these two races then became the common thread of your career ...

Let's say that at that time, there weren't 15,000 ultra races either.

These two were already intoxicating.

Even today, when I explain to my children that I am going to cross three countries all around Mont-Blanc, I feel how magical it is, just like embarking on the Diagonale des Fous or the GR20 in Corsica.

These are places that breathe adventure, routes that will remain engraved in me.

Have you ever won a major ultra-trail by finishing as exhausted as on this last UTMB?

Yes, I have even been further in 2016 in Reunion.

It was tough: I had experienced a period of cramps of three or four hours.

Imagine that I was even going downhill in reverse at the end because it made me feel less of these cramps (smile).

There, I quickly felt that my legs were stiffening and the descents were difficult.

But still happy that it is hard to complete 171 km, especially six weeks after my first, the Hardrock 100, at super high altitude and with the jet lag.

There was clearly a big risk-taking and that's what interests me.

I knew that I had not put all the chances on my side to win in Chamonix, my challenge was there.

I wanted to go to the end of the adventure by finishing the UTMB, but I didn't necessarily believe in first place.

Except that you are a winning machine, with 10 successes out of your 12 participations in the most prestigious ultras in the world for ten years ...

Deep down, it's not really my goal to win these races.

I'm not going to deny that I am competitive and interested in playing against others as well as performance.

But what motivates me the most is to take up challenges and take my body to finish the loop.

You just have to see the smile of satisfaction of each man who crosses the finish line of an ultra, from first to last… This smile must be more important in your heart than your time and your place.

Playing to win is the icing on the cake.

But I'm only leaving with a view to finishing my race.

Maybe that's also why I win.

For someone who is so used to winning, how did you experience your failure in May under 40 ° C in Cape Verde, with these 115 km completed in almost 29 hours?

For me, it was a preparation race that I planned to do quietly in 13 hours.

But I had caught a virus three weeks before departure and my body was in a borderline state.

I made a mistake: Shortly after a big viral infection, you don't line up with an ultra.

If I just wanted to win, it would have been easy to give up when I was three hours ahead of the second.

But I was there to discover all the trails and finish this challenge.

In total, I stopped eight hours, and at one point, I even took three hours to do the last 800 meters to reach a pit stop.

My body was in a cramp (laughs).

I remember that I had a great time at the base camps with the volunteers.

I went to the end of my adventure and it was an experience to be taken.

In terms of adventures, do you have the feeling that you have taken a step forward with all these

off-site

projects

organized in particular on the GR20 or in the United States?

Yes, I need the competitions but also these

challenges

with close friends. It's a good balance that I try to keep. Even last winter, I had a blast in ski touring by doing the 10,000 m of elevation gain of Pierra Menta in one go, in 17 hours. Getting a record is not my motivation. In 2017 at the John Muir Trail (359 km and 14,630 m of D + in California), I put more than 12 hours to the record, but I went there because it is one of the most beautiful trails in the world . You want to get away from it all, go there! 

The same in 2019 when I wanted to go “have fun” in the Rockies of the northern United States with the Pacific Crest Trail (900 km and 35,000 m of D +).

We did not go to the end but for me, the challenge was successful: we surpassed ourselves, we still made 450 terminals, we played well to the limits of the weather and we knew how to stop before that something dramatic does not happen.

When you get 70 cm of snow in three hours, you're not playing smart ...

Have you sometimes thought about stopping your professional activity as a physiotherapist and then as a winegrower to devote yourself 100% to the practice of ultra-trail?

No, I need this operation.

We try to sanitize the ultra, to make us believe that in ten years, the races have become ten times faster and that you have to be a 100% athlete to win.

I'm trying to show that it's wrong, that this sport hasn't changed that much. 

We do not have to impose the constraints of a high level athlete at all costs to finish an ultra, or even to win it.

Moreover, on the catwalks, we find some faces who were already there ten years ago, who often have a job elsewhere as well as children.

Yes, the discipline has evolved and it has gained momentum and media coverage, but its values ​​do not have to evolve.

After your fourth coronation on the UTMB, Kilian Jornet evoked the notion of “GOAT”, the greatest ultra-trail runner of all time, concerning you.

Do you want to become the best in history?

(Smile) I think Kilian was just happy to see that I had passed my Hardrock 100-UTMB challenge.

We get along very well and there is good competition between us.

Me, I'm just trying to keep ultra-trail what it used to be, that the best of this sport has the same adventure as the last of a race.

I try to help ensure that we do not “athletize” this discipline too much.

For example, we must pay attention to the impact that the organization of an ultra event could one day have on the Olympic Games or world championships.

Sport

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Lyon: Who is François D'Haene, the new GR20 record holder in Corsica?

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