Francois D’haene Announces Creation of New “ULTRA SPIRIT” Trail Event

With his wife, Carline, Salomon athlete and 4-time UTMB® winner Francois D'haene will welcome teams to a new ultra-trail event in the spectacular Beaufortain mountains of France from the 9-11 September 2022.

Unparalleled and exclusive, ULTRA SPIRIT will welcome 25 teams, each composed of three athletes, to a technical and demanding track enhanced with unusual and surprising challenges, all carefully hosted by Carline and François. Registration for ULTRA SPIRIT is now open, and teams have until July 3rd to apply. The final teams will be chosen by Carline and Francois themselves based on a creative application process.

“ULTRA SPIRIT is designed to be a back-to-basics ultra-trail event with a genuine alpine basecamp and a playful atmosphere, where finishing time and placing are definitely not the most important things,” Francois says. “Carline and I are excited to share this experience in the Beaufortain with the teams, and to learn their stories and share this human experience over three days.”

The event, which was conceived by Francois and Carline, is intended to be an ultra-trail event like no other, and those chosen for the final field are likely to be the envy of the ultra-running community. To be considered, runners have until July 3rd to upload their application at ultra-spiritdhaene-family.com. The process for entry was conceived by Francois and Carline, who will select the teams after careful examination of their answers, letters, pictures and videos submitted in the application process.

The event will be organized by a Racing Chief, as well as Francois’ ultra-friends, all of whom are experts in ultra-trail running. The scouting and design of the course was created by François himself, who spends most of his days in the Beaufortain mountains, which straddle the Haute-Savoie and Savoie departments in the French Alps. The event will take place over three days and feature the following stages:

• Friday, Sept. 11th: 25 km; 2,500 m of elevation gain over 5 hours (estimated)
• Saturday, Sept. 12th: 50 km; 3,300 m of elevation gain over 11 hours (estimated)
• Sunday, Sept. 13th: 20 km; 1,500 m of elevation gain over 5 hours (estimated)

Although the course design will be demanding, ULTRA SPIRIT is not exactly a race that runners will be undertaking, but a friendly, yet intense ultra event. With ULTRA SPIRIT, time is not the only ranking criterion, “With François, we have a unique course, with quite a positive elevation gain!” Carline says. “When we were winemakers, we had to motivate friends during our vineyard harvest, so we created incentives and games. So it was easy to imagine points systems and challenges for ULTRA SPIRIT to ensure that the participants will live a very human ultra-trail experience.” For months, François and his team have explored and evaluated dozens of different paths and additional loops, so that each of the three offers an unprecedented human adventure with him in his home mountains. Each team will also be tracked so they can adapt their course each day, ensuring that all the participants arrive at the same time at the alpine basecamp each night.

Following the closure of the application period on July 7, the teams chosen by Francois and Carline will be announced on July 15th. At that time, the participants will discover more about what the first ULTRA SPIRIT event will offer this September.