Andreu Blanes, the track athlete who conquered the cathedral of trail running

The two happiest days of Andreu Blanes's fledgling trail running career came at finish lines he crossed in second place. "The result doesn't matter, what matters is the emotion. I've been working for months to feel this." And he tries to put words to those seismic screams in the square of Zegama after arriving covered in blood in May. "You feel like you don't feel anything, you're no longer in charge of the ship. It's a flood, and you just let yourself go." It was a milestone for a debutant in the world's most important mountain marathon, as was his debut in perhaps the single trail race with the greatest impact, the Sierre-Zinal : the cathedral, 52 years traversing the foothills of five 4,000-meter peaks in the Alps to link those two Swiss towns over 31 kilometers and 2,200 meters of elevation gain. He arrived in 2022 as a 3,000m steeplechase runner with the season lost and beat the elite: silver on the podium and gold in the list of achievements after the winner tested positive. He's back there this Saturday, ready to feel it. "I want to prove to myself that it wasn't a fluke."

It all started with a boy from Onil who won his first cross-country race in Alicante at the age of nine. “At first, the local races, the provincial races, take you to a Spanish championship, and when you're 16, you're going to a European orienteering championship.” Later, he won silver at the World Championships, a turning point. “I want to see how far I can go.” And he changed sports. “We had this complex about orienteering not being good at running.” He tried out for the university cross-country races at the age of 25 and ended up winning . “I discovered I could run fast, and I wanted to discover other routes.” And orienteering, despite the scholarships, was in short supply.

A civil engineer, he was finishing his second master's degree, in teaching, his goal, when he decided to give the athlete a chance. So one day he sat down with his family: "I want to try to go to the Olympic Games. I'll give myself two years. I need your support because I'm a nobody in athletics." He chose the 3,000m steeplechase because he didn't see himself with the biomechanical ability to run the 5,000m or 10,000m. "The steeplechase offers you that change of pace; I thought it was a good option." Over time, he believes he would have had more options in the marathon after stunning with a 2:09m time in Valencia last year in his debut. In the end, those two years turned into six because the results provided enough income to at least be self-sufficient. "I was coming from orientation, and as soon as they gave me some running tights, I was happy. I didn't need to ask my parents for money anymore. I had a great time. I didn't go, but in the end, the result was so small..." She finished with a time of 8:26, about six seconds off her target mark.

And in between, Sierre-Zinal, a race he finished, he emphasizes, due to "a series of coincidences." He started 2022 with a fifth place in the Spanish cross-country championship. "Amazing." The following week, he received the third dose of the COVID vaccine. "And it left me exhausted for five months. Training terribly, I finally had to stop, two weeks on the couch staring at the ceiling." He did so after abandoning a 10,000m in Zaragoza in tears. By the time his body stopped rejecting the intensity, it was too late for the steeplechase season. "I'll look for something in the summer that motivates me. Zinal. What if I do this so I don't lose the season? I'll run with the good guys and see what happens." A leap into the unknown that he wove for his coaches. "Do you think I should make a plan and you review it?" Barely six weeks.

“Running without knowing you could do very well helped me. I went out for my race, not knowing if I could win or finish 50th.” He finished 22nd through Ponchette, the beginning of the end of the eternal initial climb, after climbing 1,300 meters of positive elevation gain in seven kilometers. “Oh my God, I'm going to get really bad here,” he thought. But his next step was to come: almost 20 kilometers of gentle ups and downs to 2,500 meters for a short descent to the finish line. “My goal was to get up there no matter what and then, to run. The surprise was that I started overtaking good people, getting better and better.” When his girlfriend told him that Kilian Jornet—who leads the list with ten wins—was close, he didn't take the plunge. But he was serious and caught him at the start of the final descent. “How am I going? First?” A Spaniard in the crowd shouted at him that he was fourth, but he was already fired up and caught two more Kenyans to finish second, two minutes behind Mark Kangogo, who later tested positive . Blanes, 33, downplays the podium finish in a post-race interview. “Nothing was stolen from me; for me, the experience is complete. I did feel it when I was a reserve at the 2023 European Cross Country Championships and someone from the team whistled the following month.”

Happiness at the finish line was hard to beat, as he had found himself again. “The doctor told me that time would cure me of the vaccine, but how much? A year or a lifetime? I had just turned 30; it’s not just another year, it’s one less. Seeing myself there, beating Kilian… the fear is gone. The life I’ve worked for continues.” That earned him a contract with Hoka, which respected his Olympic odyssey toward Paris 2024. Months before it ended, Zegama had already set his sights on 2025. “It’s life insurance. Many people go to the Games, or they don’t go, and then they get depressed. What now?”

Sierre-Zinal wasn't in her plans for 2025, but after her success at Zegama, she jumped on the bandwagon, a decision she has come to regret because her body didn't recover as well as she had hoped after taking two weeks off the road due to the knock to her ribs on the final descent, followed by a virus. "My goal is to improve my 2022 time and see where I'll be. Then, with twenty Africans, the result depends on them." She ran 2:29:19. Speaking with her team these past few weeks, Luismi Martín Berlanas, an Olympic steeplechase rider, told her: "The record isn't that far off, it's four minutes." He believes he can shave two minutes off the record on the climb, although he doesn't see how he can shave time off his ghost on the flat. That said, he promises to try.