LAVAREDO ULTRA TRAIL HISTORY: A RACE BUILT AROUND THE TRE CIME
The Lavaredo Ultra Trail began in 2007 as a single mountain loop out of Cortina d'Ampezzo, the resort town that sits in a bowl of limestone in the Italian Dolomites. Two decades later it anchors a five-distance weekend that draws thousands of runners to the same valley each June. The race that started small has become one of the fixed points on the European ultra calendar, and its identity has never strayed far from the rock formation that gave it a name.
This history traces how the event grew, the course that defines it, and the runners who have set its standards.
A Race Named for a Mountain
The Tre Cime di Lavaredo are three near-vertical peaks that rise to roughly 3,000 meters above the surrounding valleys. They are among the most recognizable shapes in the Dolomites, and they are the literal turning point of the race built around them. The signature distance sends runners past the base of the three towers at sunrise, after a night of climbing through the dark.
The event was founded in 2007 by local organizers who wanted to route a long-distance race through the terrain they knew. Cortina d'Ampezzo gave them a natural hub. The town has hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics and remains a center for mountain sport, and its position among the high passes made it a logical start and finish for a loop through the range.
From the start, the race leaned on scenery as much as difficulty. The course threads past refuges, alpine lakes, and high passes that are familiar to hikers but punishing to run in sequence. That combination, a recognizable landscape and a hard profile, became the template the event has kept as it expanded.
The 120K and Its Profile
The centerpiece is the Lavaredo 120K, a route of 120 kilometers with 5,800 meters of elevation gain. It starts on Corso Italia in central Cortina d'Ampezzo at 23:00, a late hour chosen so that the leaders reach the Tre Cime as the light comes up. Runners have a maximum of 30 hours to finish.
The night start is part of the race's character rather than a logistical accident. Hundreds of spectators line the streets of Cortina as the field leaves town, and the course climbs immediately toward Ospitale and Passo Tre Croci before working its way toward Misurina and the Rifugio Auronzo below the towers. From there the route turns back through Cimabanche and a series of passes, including Col Gallina, Rifugio Averau, and Passo Giau, before the long descent to the finish.
The winning men cover the distance in under 12 hours, an average pace that requires the runnable sections to be run hard rather than hiked. For most of the field the race is an all-day and overnight effort, which is why the 30-hour limit and the chain of mountain refuges matter as much as the leaders' splits.
The profile is the reason the race is hard to compare to flatter ultras. The 5,800 meters of climbing arrive in repeated long ascents rather than one or two big climbs, and the descents are technical enough to punish anyone who arrives at them with tired legs. The col Gallina section late in the route has become a recognized decision point, where leaders who have spent too much earlier in the night tend to give back time. The combination of distance, vertical gain, and a finish that comes only after the high passes is what places the 120K in the longest category the UTMB World Series recognizes.
Growth Into a Multi-Distance Weekend
The event no longer runs a single race. By the mid-2020s the weekend in Cortina had grown to five distances, the 120K alongside an 80K, a 50K, a 20K, and a 10K, with the shorter events drawing large fields of their own. The 2024 edition counted more than 6,000 runners across the program, and the races spread across several days and start points around the valley.
That expansion mirrors a wider shift in trail running, where flagship ultras became weekend festivals with entries for runners of every distance. The Lavaredo weekend now functions that way, with the 120K as the headline and the shorter races feeding a broader base of participation.
The event also tied itself to the sport's largest series. It joined the Ultra-Trail World Tour in its early years and later became part of the UTMB World Series, racing under the full name La Sportiva Lavaredo Ultra Trail by UTMB alongside circuit events such as Val d'Aran by UTMB, the European Major in the Pyrenees. The 120K carries the series' 100M-category status, which links a finish in Cortina to the qualifying and ranking structure that runners use to reach the UTMB finals in Chamonix.
The Namberger Era
No runner has shaped the men's race more than Hannes Namberger. The German won the 120K three times, in 2021, 2022, and 2024, and for several years his name was the benchmark for the course. In 2022 he became the first athlete to run the 120K and its 5,800 meters of climbing in under 12 hours, a mark that stood as the course best for the next three years.
Namberger's 2024 win showed how he held the race together even on a difficult day. He finished in 11:57:15, again under 12 hours, while holding off Tom Evans of Great Britain, who came second in 12:00:45. Yannick Noel of France took third. Namberger said afterward that the race felt like a second home, and his repeated returns to Cortina made him the figure most associated with the event through the early 2020s.
Andreas Reiterer, an Italian racing on home terrain, became a regular presence near the front in the same period. He led portions of the 2024 race before fading and has finished on or near the podium, giving the event a local contender to set against its international winners.
Records Fall in 2025
The 2025 edition rewrote both ends of the 120K record book. Ben Dhiman of the United States took the lead about 30 kilometers in and ran 11:49, lowering Namberger's course best by eight minutes to set a new men's record. Raul Butaci of Romania finished second in 12:02, and Reiterer took third in 12:05, his return to the podium in Cortina.
The women's race that year belonged to Courtney Dauwalter of the United States, one of the most accomplished ultrarunners of her generation. She won clearly in 14:14, but the result also underlined how high the women's standard had become. Dauwalter finished just over five minutes outside the course record, a mark set the previous year by Rosanna Buchauer.
Buchauer, of Germany, won the 120K in 2024 in 14:09:23 after leading from the early kilometers and extending her advantage through the closing stages. That time remained the women's course record into 2026, surviving even Dauwalter's run. The pairing of Buchauer's record and Dauwalter's chase gave the race two of the sport's leading women in consecutive editions.
The Weekend Beyond the 120K
The shorter races have produced their own champions, and several of them are familiar names in their own right. The 50K has drawn strong fields, with Italian runner Francesco Puppi winning in 2025 in just over four hours, a result close to his earlier winning time on the same course. Elisa Desco, an Italian who had returned from a long injury layoff, won the women's 50K in 2024 and spoke of how knowing the route allowed her to manage her effort.
The 80K has served as a proving ground for American runners in particular. Drew Holmen won the men's 80K in 2025 in under eight hours, and Emmiliese von Avis took the women's 80K in 2024 after a race decided in the closing kilometers. These results matter because they show how the event functions as a full weekend of competition rather than a single headline race, with depth across every distance.
The spread of nationalities on the podiums also reflects the race's reach. German, British, Italian, American, Romanian, French, and Norwegian runners have all finished near the front of the 120K in recent editions, a sign of how far the entry list now travels to reach Cortina each June.
What the Race Has Become
The Lavaredo Ultra Trail has kept the same essential shape since 2007. It still starts at night in Cortina d'Ampezzo, still turns around the Tre Cime di Lavaredo at first light, and still asks runners to cover roughly 120 kilometers and climb most of a vertical mile and a half. What changed is the scale around that core, from a single race to a five-distance weekend, and the level of the field, from a regional event to one that draws world-class names to the Dolomites.
The records reflect that arc. The men's best dropped under 12 hours with Namberger and then under 11:50 with Dhiman, and the women's record set by Buchauer held against one of the strongest fields the race has seen. The 2026 edition, scheduled for late June, continues a run that has stretched without interruption to its place among Europe's defining mountain ultras.