2026 Defi Des Couleurs Race Preview

Next thing I want to talk about for this preview, I mentioned earlier WMRA, World Mountain Running Association.

These are races that we typically kind of overlook or are lesser known in the United States.

Essentially, WMRA is just like a mountain running outfit, and they put out a list of their races uh, WMRA races and then athletes compete.

And basically there's a point standing and like a ranking system.

And I'm probably not doing the world's best job of describing this, but a lot of big races that you follow and know closely, like Sears and all ones that you probably don't know as well, but vertical, vertical in the Sago and trophy on a Sago, which we've talked about, and I believe we've been previewed this year.

Um, but basically a lot of the most competitive sub ultra, uh, mountain races, both uphill and uptown, um, fall under WMRA, and it's not as well known in the United States, but it's unfortunate because, honestly, WMRA races are often the most densely competitive trail races in the world, often even more so than Golden Trail World Series races because a lot of the same guys, especially Patrick Philemon, Michael Salelo, Saoli, Paul Machoka, people that you're seeing a lot in this year's Golden Trail World Series standings, They race these WMRA races on top of very, very talented European VK and up and up down specialists.

And on top of even more, I would say East Africans, I would say the East African density, particularly the Kenyans, but occasionally Ugandans and Eritreans.

is more common in wmra races where they can race multiple races that are shorter and take less of a toll on their body and also have prize winnings um compared to golden trail series or uh other races that don't have as much uh don't have as much trying to think yeah opportunity to race and get prize money i guess so Okay, so that is WMRA.

And yeah, I think honestly a lot of the WMRA events are kind of slept on.

The ones that are well-known, Heroes and All, a couple other ones I just mentioned.

But basically WMRA puts out a calendar and you can get points doing their different WMRA races.

All right, so I was interested what means.

I put it in Google Translate.

They said it means color challenge, so I guess I'll have to confirm that.

But I assume it has to do with the fall, autumn season, leaves changing.

So like I mentioned earlier, it's put on by Julian Lacoste, who is way ahead of all of us in the standings for first place overall and I think has been top five each of the last three years.

He's a master picker at Fantasy Free Trail and knows this course as well as anyone can.

So I would not be surprised to see him take the overall win in at least one of the two races this weekend.

According to Free Trail, for this weekend, the race, there's 140 elites from 20 different nations.

They're representing 20 different nations and competing for $43,000 in prize money.

So talking about course previews, I'm going to talk about the athletes are largely the same for both races.

There are a few athletes that are just racing the uphill, but I'm just going to talk about all the athletes and then their chances in each individual race.

So it's going to be kind of a dual preview where I just talk about the athletes and I'll try to include if they're only racing one of the races and then I'll put in my picks for the men's and women's fields.