The U.S.’s Jim Walmsley emerged with the win at the 2025 Trail World Championships Long Trail after spending much of the race running with the French duo of Benjamin Roubiol and Louison Coiffet. In the following interview, Jim talks about what it was like to run with the Frenchmen over the more technical first half of the course, what he thought of the course at race pace versus scouting pace, some of the strategies he used to play to his strengths, and how he finally opened the gap he was able to hold until the end.
For more on how the race played out, read our in-depth 2025 Trail World Championships Long Trail results article.
[Editor’s Note: If you are unable to see the video above, click here to access it.]
Jim Walmsley, 2025 Long Trail World Champion, Interview Transcript
iRunFar: Meghan Hicks of iRunFar. I’m with Jim Walmsley. It’s the day after the 2025 Trail World Championships Long Trail, and we’re here with the men’s champion. Congratulations, Jim.
Jim Walmsley: Thanks so much.
iRunFar: How’s that feeling the day after?
Walmsley: Pretty typical of an ultra. Really sore, and I think getting more sore as the minute goes on, but it’s always worth it.
iRunFar: That was really fun to watch from an audience perspective yesterday. How did it go from your version?
Walmsley: Yeah, I guess I’m making a habit of that at my expense, but hey. It went way smoother than like say OCC where I had some mistakes that just made it kind of feel sloppy, but yesterday everything felt pretty dialed, and went to plan, and legs felt super good from the beginning. Was able to eat and drink all day, so I avoided too much of the unexpected lows. I think everybody was doing what they could manage the last climb or two climbs. So in the last 10 miles, but yeah, that’s where it got to be a bit true ultra, which is pretty nice, especially for a 50 miler. It doesn’t always get a couple hours of that.
iRunFar: Where you get into that zone.
Walmsley: Yeah. It’s steep, it’s rocky, and you just hike right through it. And you know, even a good hike is the best anyone’s managing. So yeah.
iRunFar: It looked like you built a relationship with second place, Louison Coiffet, and his other teammate, Benjamin Roubiol. You guys were like best friends for the first half of the race.
Walmsley: Yeah. I got to run with the French team yesterday, and they’re quite strong. But Petter [Engdahl], I think, played a big part in the early stuff because Petter and I, we definitely bonded a bit more because we could tell we were strong going up comparatively to the two French guys, and then the two French guys were considerably stronger, I would say, going down.
iRunFar: Okay.
Walmsley: And I was even talking with Petter of like, let’s keep the pressure on the ups, and then I’ll try to stay in front on the descents to just manage the speed on the descents so that they don’t get away, and try to kind of clog it a little bit. And I think it was actually a really kind of spontaneous strategy, but I think it actually worked quite well, because it never stretched out on the descent, which looking at this course and looking at the runners of the field, it was probably the biggest concern that guys would like, really hammer descents and get away.
iRunFar: I wonder if that’s because this race only had one giant descent, the final one. All of the others were like 1,000 feet, 300 meters, 400 meters. I wonder if it just wasn’t enough time for the downhill specialists to make loads of distance.
Walmsley: I mean, but they were super technical, steep descents.
iRunFar: Yeah.
Walmsley: So I don’t know if you got out on the course and saw our first two descents. Those were, luckily, the trickiest parts were kind of earlier in the middle of the race as far as technicality. The back half of the course, I knew was more straightforward. So, if I could manage the first half of the race like this, then the second half of the race, it starts to become an ultra. It starts to become more like chunky trail that we’d be more used to. Less tricky with proper technical descents, or skyrunning ridges. So, being more straightforward and later in the race, I was just hoping that some of my strengths would start coming through late in the race.
iRunFar: A couple of those ridges in the first half of the race were really fun to watch you guys going back and forth on. Was it fun to play on those, or were you just like, oh lord, let’s get through this to where I can move with a little bit more flow?
Walmsley: Yeah. It’s just always so surprising to me that on race day, with a race lens and a bib, technical things that when I scouted the course, I’m like, oh gosh, this is going to be a disaster. I don’t want to race something with exposure like this and this technical. But yeah, you put the bib on and you start racing, and it’s always crazy how things change like this. And what was hard becomes smooth, and yeah, luckily got through it all safely, and relatively smooth, and actually quite fast, I think. So yeah, it was good.
iRunFar: Somewhere out in the French section of the course is where you finally were able to make a gap on the men. When you came back into Spain, when you came into the Candanchú, I think you had about a two-minute lead on Louison.
Walmsley: Yeah.
iRunFar: Did you intentionally make a move out there or did that sort of just naturally happen?
Walmsley: I think that gap started to naturally happen. So first, Benjamin started to fall off the pace a bit, which, that was a bit surprising because he felt really well-rounded, but maybe he was pushing a little more, especially uphill, early. And so that was kind of just the overall strategy to put like a full court press and force mistakes late or tiredness, and that these cracks would start to open up. But there’s no real move with it. It’s just a constant pressure of how I was trying to pace myself. But at times, too, we’re descending so fast, you’re like, surely my legs are going to blow up as well. But I was pretty much descending all day. My legs stayed together, which was pretty nice. Not necessarily, I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen.
iRunFar: Yeah.
Walmsley: But you have to take a bit of that risk to play in the game. And then I think, for most of the race, Benjamin felt really well-rounded with his ability up, down, and even flat. Where Louison, his super-strength is definitely, I would say, on the front, the best technical descender, but wasn’t quite as strong with the up or flat. So when things split, and it was just Louison and myself, I felt that I could perhaps gain some advantage on some of the more runnable ups.
iRunFar: From Candanchú, which is about 65k to where we saw you next, which was a little after 70k, so let’s say 6k of distance, your gap went from two minutes to about eight minutes. You must have pushed the gas.
Walmsley: That’s kind of where, late in the race, especially a race like this, where you’re using poles, and people get into a rhythm of hiking the ups. I’ve kind of noticed in other races like Madeira Island [Ultra Trail] that when you really want to, you see a small crack, you start to try to kind of tempo more climbs. So, you’re running with the poles. And yeah, the idea was to see hopefully if I can make two minutes four minutes, or four minutes six minutes.
iRunFar: Yeah.
Walmsley: And just keep applying pressure when I start getting away. But yeah. So I think that climb I very intentionally started to kind of tempo the climb, but then I know from basically Candanchú to, I think it was just before Candanchú, I started to maybe put some pressure.
iRunFar: Okay.
Walmsley: But I think the rewards started coming after Candanchú, and I was still hiking pretty well.
iRunFar: Lots of chatter pre-race about the 122 descent switchbacks back down to town afterwards. How was that? [laughs]
Walmsley: It’s alright. I think for me, I was happy to have that as a final descent rather than one of the technical descents. It’s a pretty straightforward, smooth descent. It just takes forever and goes on.
iRunFar: How did it feel to cross the line and become the World Champion of the Long Trail? You have a lot of proverbial feathers in your cap at this point, but that’s just one more notch, eh?
Walmsley: I don’t know. It’s special, for sure, because I think it was a big fight, and that’s always pretty cool to just dig deep and find that kind of fight within yourself. Like, that only happens in a race scenario. So that’s super special, firstly. And then second, is just kind of, I think many of us are just scratching our heads where this fits and compares to the big races like UTMB or Western States, and how this fits in. And I think all of us don’t quite know yet, but I think we can at least say the field for Long Trail, at least this year, was pretty insane. And I know, looking at the start list, I’m like, how do you look at this list and say you’re going to win, or this is going to happen, on this sort of course. So yeah, it’s just crazy to pull off things again.
iRunFar: There was some fun chatter with Team France this morning where they said, you know, the Americans, they were double champions, but both champions live in France.
Walmsley: Okay.
iRunFar: A little bit like, can we claim them just by association?
Walmsley: Yeah. I mean, I think France provides a pretty good opportunity to be in the mountains, and a good landscape for training for trail. I think both Katie [Schide] and I have been pretty captured by the mountains in France. So, yeah.
iRunFar: Good place to live, good place to train. So okay by association.
Walmsley: Yeah, it’s alright.
iRunFar: Last question for you. You said in your pre-race interview you were still thinking of one more race for 2025. What’s in the thoughts there?
Walmsley: I don’t know. I’ve got to see how my feet heal up. My feet got pretty banged up from this one. Yeah. I’ve got to see if I shut it down or try to do one more, but I probably won’t travel to Reunion Island.
iRunFar: Okay.
Walmsley: That was kind of the big one, but I think timing might not be right. I’m not sure my energy will be back for that one, and I think you need your energy right to fight there, and you’re going to show up and get beat by the course no matter what. If you kind of half ass it, so I’ve done that kind of once before, and I don’t want to do it again. I know I need to be a bit more prepared than probably what I am now.
iRunFar: The best part about Reunion Island is it is there every year.
Walmsley: Yeah. It’s annual. But I haven’t been back in, it’ll be eight years now. So yeah. The time is coming to go back.
iRunFar: One of these days.
Walmsley: Yep.
iRunFar: Congratulations on your win of the Long Trail World Championships, and we’ll see if we see you again this year.
Walmsley: Thank you very much.
