Courtney Dauwalter and Katie Schide to face off at 2026 Hardrock 100

For the first time since 2023, ultra-trail fans will get to see the two most dominant female stars of the ultra-trail scene, Courtney Dauwalter and Katie Schide, race against each other in 2026–at the fabled Hardrock 100 in Silverton, Colo., which starts on July 10. The two have not raced since 2023, when Dauwalter broke the course record at Western States 100 (WSER), and Schide finished second, in the second-fastest-ever time by a woman on the course.

It will be thrilling to see these two women race; Dauwalter is widely acknowledged as the GOAT among female ultrarunners, though she struggled in the most poignantly human way at this year’s UTMB, finishing 10th. She is now 40, but there’s no reason to see that disappointment as a portent, even if a host of younger athletes (Schide is 33) are nipping at her heels–just ask two-time Hardrock 100 winner Ludovic Pommeret (who is 50).

Dauwalter’s first UTMB win came in 2019; Schide was in the top 10 that year, and again when Dauwalter won in 2021. But few people really paid attention to her until 2022, when she won UTMB for the first time. Since then, she’s proven herself to be right up there with the best runners in the sport’s (admittedly short) history, racking up victories at Diagonale des Fous in 2023 and three major races in 2024 (Canyons 100K by UTMB, WSER and UTMB, where she broke Dauwalter’s course record), as well as this year’s Hardrock 100, where she did the same, dipping under 26 hours. At this year’s Sierre-Zinal, a short (a 31-km steep mountain race in Spain), just a month after winning Hardrock, she finished third, and six weeks after that, she won the Long Trail (80K) event at the World Trail Running Championships, also in Spain. 

Anything can happen in the next seven months; athletes get injured, priorities and strategies change. But mark it on your calendar, and, fingers crossed, the race will be on. Both athletes are wildly popular;  everyone loves a winner, of course, and they are both clearly winners, but it isn’t just that–each, in their own way, epitomizes a down-to-earth quality, an openness combined with humility that we love to see in our sporting heroes. The challenge for most fans will be deciding who to root for.