One Man’s Mountain Odyssey
Salomon has a long-standing tradition of providing people the means to fulfil their sporting dreams, meticulously crafting equipment to meet the needs of the world’s top athletes then making that expertise available to a broad customer base.
Now they are taking the paradigm one step further with Kilian’s Quest – a series of trail-running endeavours designed to take one remarkable man on a personal and equally remarkable journey.
Man has always gone to the mountains, sometimes to conquer or be conquered, but never without the underlying objective of self-discovery and a profound respect for the timeless vastness of this mythical environment.
Kilian Jornet, a soft-spoken Catalan hailing from the foothills of the Pyrenees, is one such man, whose burgeoning career has set the world of trial-running alight with stunning performances in a number of topflight events, including last year’s UTMB, where he pulverised the previous record time.
A childhood among the peaks, he climbed his first 3,000m summit at the tender age of four, has bestowed him with an exceptional metabolism, finely-tuned for high altitude endurance sports, and his well-established partnership with Salomon, has, over the years, laid a solid foundation for future international success. But Kilian has a dream and Salomon has the means to make it come true…
Though an overall sense of awe and wonder for the milieu is the principal driving force behind his sporting achievements, not all peaks are equal in his eyes, and his burning ambition is to explore a selection of the world’s mountain trails that hold a special significance for him.
Kilian’s calm and resigned approach to the mountain pervades everything he does and it is with this characteristic quietude that he approached Salomon with the idea that they accompany him in this pursuit, providing moral as well as material support for the concept.
Thus was born Kilian’s Quest, a groundbreaking collaboration between a prescient sponsor and one of the world’s most promising mountain sports athletes.
Ancillary to this concept, and in keeping with Kilian’s obvious propensity for breaking established records, is the notion of the race against time, where the primary objective of his personal odyssey is complemented by the possibility of leaving a mark in the annals of mountain achievement – a cherry on what is already a substantial cake.
To this end, the whole affair gets underway in May with a warm-up attempt on his existing record for the Vertical Kilometre followed by the real business in mid-June, when Kilian will chase the record for the GR20 that runs the length of the Island of Corsica in the Mediterranean.
A Few Firsts
- 1987: first breath – Sabadell, Spain 1990: first +2,000m – Perafita, Andorra (2,752m)
- 1992: first +3,000m – Aneto Peak, Spain (3,404m)
- 2000: first race – Copa Espana Molina
- 2003: first selection for Team Spain / 1st place – Spanish Ski-Mountaineering Team Championship
- 2004: first World Championship Vertical Race win (cadet), Catalonian Elite Sportsman Award, ‘Consell Català de l’Esport’, Spanish Elite Sportsman Award, ‘ Consejo Superior de Deportes’
- 2005: first record – Dôme de Neige les Écrins, 1st place – European Championship Vertical Race (cadet) 1st place – Spanish Team Championships with Jordi Oliva
- 2006: first Fully Kilometre Vertical win (new record), World Champion with Team Catalunya, SkyGames, 1st – place French Mountain Racing Championships (junior)
- 2007: first Buff SkyRunner World Series win (4 wins), 1st place – European Championship Vertical Race (junior, 1st place – Fully Km. Vertical (new record)
- 2008: first UTMB win (course record), Champion – Buff SkyRunner World Series (3 wins), 1st place – Pierra Menta with Florent Troillet
- 2009: first title of the year – World Cup Individual Champion ,1st place – European Championship
More dates and venues will be coming soon as this exciting series develops and Kilian embarks on his Quest…
