“The Skinny Line” is a brand new movie from Scott Sports activities, produced by Timothée Ranger, which follows 4 of the model’s skilled athletes as they put together for and compete on the 2024 UTMB. We meet Cody Lind (U.S.), Anne-Lise Rousset Séguret (France), Rémi Berchet (France), and Andy Symonds (U.Ok., lives in France) as all of them search to carry out at their greatest on the 109.3-mile race round Mont Blanc.
The UTMB course begins in Chamonix, France, and dips into Italy and Switzerland earlier than looping again to Chamonix, masking 32,480 toes of elevation acquire alongside the best way. The race at all times attracts an awfully aggressive subject, and the movie delicately highlights the psychological challenges of making ready for a feat of this magnitude. The athletes are strolling a skinny line between efficiency and harm, success and failure. The place does self-belief finish and exterior strain start?
There’s a transferring perception — one which isn’t typically explored in movies of this nature — into the expertise of the athlete inside the crowds at a race as massive as this. There are literally thousands of fellow runners, but additionally hordes of spectators lining the course. The ambiance is buzzing, it’s electrical, however as Symonds notes, it’s in stark distinction to the quiet of the mountains. Berchet says, “While you’re within the viewers it’s nice and unbelievable, while you’re on the opposite facet, it’s very scary and worrying.” We see that Rousset Séguret is all smiles as soon as the race is underway, however she remembers emotions of hysteria within the strain of the beginning line.
Anne-Lise Rousset Séguret on the 2024 Madeira Island Extremely-Path. Picture: Scott Working
That is very a lot a movie concerning the highs and lows, not simply of this iconic race, however of the game on the whole. Berchet thoughtfully articulates the significance of working since you really wish to, and discovering the appropriate causes to coach. Rousset Séguret supplies measured views about balancing the game alongside her life as a mother and as a vet. Symonds eats some ice cream. And Lind merely states, “Typically working is simply so rattling exhausting.”
Andy Symonds with the promised end line ice cream that obtained him by means of the 2024 UTMB. Picture: Alanis Duc
The movie comes on the race from a extremely beautiful assortment of private angles in what serves to be an altogether transferring and galvanizing piece of storytelling. It’s a celebration of the mountains and trails that obtained these athletes into the game, whatever the consequence of the race.
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Cody Lind on his approach to inserting seventh on the 2024 UTMB. Picture: Alanis Duc