‘Like Good Wine’: 50-Year-Old Ludo Pommeret Wins His Third Consecutive Hardrock 100
Ludovic Pommeret continues to defy logic and prove age is just a number.
The French trail runner turned in a historic performance at the Hardrock 100 on Friday and Saturday in the heart of Colorado’s most rugged mountain range, winning for the third year in a row in a course-record time of 21 hours, 11 minutes, and 36 seconds.
Pommeret has been one of the best ultradistance runners in the world for nearly two decades, but he just turned 50 and he ran the fastest time anyone has ever run on the rugged Hardrock course.
The race is considered the most difficult ultradistance trail-running race in North America and one of the toughest in the world. It sends runners on a 101.8-mile loop through the San Juan Mountains with about 33,000 feet of elevation gain and loss. That includes an average elevation of 11,000 feet above sea level and a huge climb up and over 14,048-foot Handies Peak, one of the 58 peaks in Colorado that rise above 14,000 feet.
Pommeret took the lead early on Friday morning and outran an accomplished field of runners and crossed the finish line in Silverton, Colorado, at 3:21 a.m. on Saturday, hours before the sun rose in the historic mining town.
He broke his old overall and clockwise course records by 20 minutes and beat runner-up Jimmy Elam, a 39-year-old runner from Midway, Utah, by more than two and a half hours.
Only Utah’s Karl Meltzer (five wins), Spain’s Kilian Jornet (four wins) and Colorado’s Courtney Dauwalter (four wins) have earned more Hardrock titles than Pommeret, who said he would likely return in 2027 to try to make it four in a row.
“It seems it is easier when you’re getting old,” Pommeret said. “You can see the end (of your career) and these moments are a lot less. So maybe like good wine, when you are older, you are better.”
Fast From the Start
Pommeret is a bit of an unsung hero in the world of ultradistance mountain running, even though he’s finished among the top six at the venerable 106-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) race in Chamonix, France, five times—including winning it in 2016. But what has been striking about Pommeret is how strong he’s run in difficult mountain ultra races since turning 40.
He had to wait more than five years to get into Hardrock through its lottery system, but since turning 48, he’s won the race three times while finishing fifth and sixth, respectively, in the UTMB race twice. He’s hoping to add another strong finish at this year’s UTMB in August.
How does he do it? Pommeret takes a different approach than most professional athletes, who typically swear by rigid, high-intensity interval sessions. Instead, his training philosophy leans surprisingly easygoing. Rather than grinding through structured intervals, he racks up long hours at a slow, conversational pace in the mountains.
In the winter, he does very little running but instead focuses on low-impact ski mountaineering as his primary training modality. He says that helps him sidestep overtraining and keeps the chronic fatigue that often catches up with older athletes at bay.
In the month before Hardrock, Pommeret arrives in Silverton and works through nearly three complete "Softrock" loops—an informal, non-race version of the Hardrock course in 25- to 50-mile chunks—all done at a deliberately easy pace. He considers it ideal training at altitude, in his view, just breeding more fatigue, so he keeps the effort low across the board, only picking up the pace on the occasional climb to help with acclimatization.
“I’ve talked to him a little bit about it, and I think he’s one of those guys for whom age is not a limiting factor,” Hardrock 100 race director and co-founder Dale Garland said. “I have been around two or three of them who are as good at 40 as they are at 50, and mountain biker Ned Overend was one of them. But I also think it’s about the time he spends here training on the course year after year after year.”
Although Pommeret was viewed as a prerace contender, the overwhelming favorite was British runner Tom Evans, who was making his Hardrock debut. Evans, 34, a former British Army captain, won last year’s prominent Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc race in Chamonix, France, and in 2023 won the Western States 100 in California.
Both runners had arrived in Colorado weeks ahead of time to acclimate to the altitude, but Pommeret knew his experience on the course was going to be a factor. A computer engineer who worked for Swiss air traffic control before retiring in 2025, Pommeret made the calculated decision to push the pace early in the race to keep Evans uncomfortable amid the high altitude and some unfamiliar sections of the course.
“It was my strategy to go out fast,” he said. “I knew that if Tom didn’t get the victory, he would drop out, and that’s what happened.”
Pommeret was the first runner to cross over the 12,920-foot saddle of Grant Swamp Pass at mile 14.9 after a staunch 2,300-foot climb over the previous 3 miles.
Evans and Jimmy Elam, a 39-year-old Utah runner who was also making his Hardrock debut, were the only runners who clung close to Pommeret, who continued to lead on the way into the Chapman Gulch aid station at mile 18.1. From there the Frenchman built an 11-minute lead over Evans and an 18-minute advantage over Elam by the Telluride aid station (mile 27.8).
After that, it was all Pommeret the rest of the way, even after he honored the decades-old race tradition of drinking a shot of tequila at the Kroger’s Canteen aid station (mile 32.7). Elam and Evans also did shots, even though Evans was reluctant, and it seemed to give Elam a boost and sucked the life out of Evans.
Pommeret left the Grouse Gulch aid station (mile 58.2) near the ghost town of Animas Forks with a 20-minute lead over Elam, who was still looking good in second place.
But Evans struggled between the Ouray aid station and the 12,800-foot saddle of Engineer Pass and arrived at the Grouse Gulch aid station in bad shape. He collapsed and was helped to the medical tent suffering from what race officials said was altitude sickness. (He was taken to a local medical facility, where he was given IV fluids and later released.)
Several other runners among the men’s top 10 early in the race succumbed to Pommeret’s pace-pushing pressure and dropped midway through the race.
“I would put Ludo in that same category of those athletes who are not really freaks of nature, but yes, really freaks of nature,” Garland said.
It didn’t matter who had dropped out behind him because Pommeret was cruising up front. He extended his lead on his way up and over Handies Peak (mile 63.5) and never looked back.
He continued to extend his lead over Elam over the final 30 miles, even though Elam ran a solid race from start to finish to claim second (23:48:57).
“I want to talk to (Ludo) and ask him all his secrets,” Elam said at the finish line after Pommeret had returned to his hotel to sleep. “Especially how he runs downhill so fast. He’s unreal.”
David Ayala, 44, of Bozeman, Montana, followed up his strong fourth-place finish last year by finishing third in 24:48:18, while Ryan Smith, 47, of Boulder, Colorado, placed fourth.
Courtney Dauwalter, 41, of Buena Vista, Colorado, won the women’s race for the fourth time in a clockwise course record of 26:03:10.
Brian Metzler is a Boulder, Colorado, writer and editor whose work has appeared in Runner’s World, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Outside, Trail Runner, The Chicago Tribune, and Red Bulletin. He’s a former walk-on college middle-distance runner who has transitioned to trail running and pack burro racing in Colorado.