Mount Yun 2025 Results

Mount Yun by UTMB happened last week deep in rural China. The event stretches from 11-20 of April with several races and other festivities. I received the official press release from UTMB and it’s worth a read. It’s in Chinese, but if you use your auto translation tool in your browser you can get some incredible insight into an event on the other side of the world we have hardly any visibility or insight in. And a reminder to not stumble over the faulty translation provided here by the AI tool. For one: the event is massive. And an event of this scale, grown from 700 runners in 2018 to 10,000 requires the involvement of the government, especially in China:

The competition is hosted by the People’s Government of Xiangning County, undertaken by the Education and Sports Bureau of Xiangning County and Yunqiu Mountain Tourism Development Co., Ltd. of Xiangning County, and operated by Shanxi Longjing Sports Co., Ltd.

Mount Yun is also not just a sporting event, but a cultural festival:

The 2025 Yunqiu Mountain Cross-country Race by UTMB® is not only a sports event, but also a cultural tour. During the competition, the organizing committee, together with the township government, held a series of cultural activities, including folk exhibitions in southern Jin, non-heritage skills display, etc., so that players and tourists can fully feel the unique charm of “the quiet mountain countryside and healthy and blessed land” in addition to the tense and exciting competition.

A big focus of the event is sustainability:

With the concept of sustainable development, Longjing Sports uses recycled plastic bottles as raw materials to create competition uniforms and competition uniforms, avoids the waste of resources from the source, so that each piece of clothing becomes a gentle response to the earth, and promotes sustainable development with actions.

The other achievement worth highlighting is that Jiasheng SHEN seem to have run two races. And won them both.

And lastly, the prizes for podiums being handed over in actual stacks of cash and runners posting photos of themselves with it is a fascinating cultural oddity.

Find all UTMB coverage on my dedicated UTMB page here.

For full results visit the UTMB website, below the top runners by race:

UMY 161KM (100M – 4 Stones)

Women:

1. Ronghua DENG – China – 21:58:48
2. Liping WANG – China – 22:13:06
3. Varvara SHIKANOVA – Neutral Athlete – 22:53:29

Men:

1. Jiaju ZHAO – China – 17:51:36
2. Yongbo WU – China – 18:13:37
3. Jiqian WANG – China – 18:14:22

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DMY 97KM (100K – 3 Stones)

Women:

1. Fuzhao XIANG – China – 11:00:49
2. Wenrong ZHENG – China – 12:14:16
3. Ying LI – China – 12:33:09

Men:

1. Zhengqiang XIONG – China – 10:15:08
2. Min QI – China – 10:39:16
3. Hualing CHEN – China – 10:59:28

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MMY 48KM (50K – 2 Stones)

Women:

1. Ting ZHANG – China – 05:16:39
2. Ruifang ZHOU – China – 05:18:29
3. Ram Maya BUDHA – Nepal – 05:38:33

Men:

1. Tao LUO – China – 04:08:31
2. Erqing WU – China – 04:10:52
3. Yeyuedu SHI – China – 04:29:36

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NMY 30KM (20K – 1 Stone)

Women:

1. Sunmaya BUDHA – Nepal – 03:10:12
2. Yane HU – China – 04:12:00
3. Jun LI – China – 04:21:17

Men:

1. Jiasheng SHEN – China – 02:39:13
2. Hu ZHAO – China – 02:55:54
3. Hongyi ZHANG – China – 03:18:01

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EMY 22KM (20K – 1 Stone)

Women:

1. Jing WANG – China – 03:23:16
2. Yanxiao WANG – China – 03:26:43
3. Xianghong LI – China – 03:36:40

Men:

1. Jiasheng SHEN – China – 01:59:51
2. Lei CHEN – China – 02:32:22
3. Yongtian WANG – China – 02:38:43

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Below are the numbers broken down by distance and gender:

• UMY Starters: 735. DNF: 99 + Finishers: 636. Women 126 (20%), Men 509 (80%).
• DMY Starters: 465. DNF: 46 + Finishers: 419. Women 111 (26%), Men 308 (74%).
• MMY Starters: 1,993. DNF: 67 + Finishers: 1,926. Women 668 (35%), Men 1258 (65%).
• NMY Starters: 1,156. DNF: 12 + Finishers: 1,144. Women 432 (38%), Men 712 (62%).
• EMY Starters: 784. DNF: 25 + Finishers: 759. Women 301 (40%), Men 458 (60%).
• TMY, LMY, YMY – all cancelled due to weather.

Mount Yun by UTMB saw a total of 5,133 starters (not counting the three races that had been cancelled) and 4,884 finishers. 1,638 (34%) women and 3,245 (66%) men reached the finish line and earned themselves their respective stones and an UTMB index (or directly punched their ticket to the Finals in Chamonix for 2025). Last year this event had just 3,683 racers, and I say just because even this number is already quite massive. But this year, with over 5000 runners across the 5 distances this event has become one of the largest in the UTMB World Series.

Next up is the highly anticipated and competitive Canyons Endurance Runs in California, USA on 25-26 of April, 2025 and the brand new Grand Raid Ventoux in France on 25-27 April 2025.