At 10 p.m. on Thursday 15 October, 2,839 runners will set off on the Diagonale des Fous, the most mythical of the five races that make up the 34th Grand Raid, staged across La Réunion from 15 to 18 October 2026. The scale of the event says much about what it means to the territory: 180 kilometres of course and 10,200 metres of positive elevation, on a starting line open to the world. Between 3 and 13 October, around 1,300 participants, and as many of their relatives, were expected at Roland-Garros airport, where a dedicated welcome area offered punch, fruit juice, interpreters and information. For the island, the race is a festival it hosts with pride; for its own runners, it is also a yearly reckoning, a measure of what athletes who hold down ordinary jobs can achieve against professionals who train full time.
Few embody that reckoning more closely than Judicaël Sautron. The 44-year-old from Sainte-Marie has already finished three times as the first Réunionnais on the Diagonale, and this year he returns with a blunt ambition. “The goal is not just to finish,” he told Outre-mer La 1ère in an interview published ahead of the race (https://la1ere.franceinfo.fr/reunion/le-but-c-est-pas-juste-de-finir-c-est-de-performer-de-representer-la-reunion-deja-trois-fois-1er-reunionnais-judicael-sautron-veut-briller-encore-plus-fort-sur-la-diagonale-des-fous-1744704.html). “It is to take a fine place, to perform, to represent La Réunion, but also my team Prudence Créole as well as possible.”
Behind the ambition sits a grievance he makes no effort to disguise. No local runner has won the race in the past twenty years, and that absence weighs on him. “It pains me because we live in La Réunion and we too dream of winning, for La Réunion,” he said, speaking in Creole. He insists the explanation is circumstance rather than talent. Local runners cannot accumulate the thirty hours of weekly training that professionals put in, and they go without the same equipment, the same nutritional support and the same physiotherapy follow-up. “If they put us in the same conditions, paid, followed by a physiotherapist, with a specific diet and all of that, I think a Réunionnais can win,” he argued. “Because I can see that we produce fine results all the same. Fabrice Payet finished sixth last year, and that proves Réunionnais have a good level after all.”
The strength of the field is, for him, the attraction rather than the obstacle. “That is also what drives me: the Grand Raid is a race that attracts the world’s best ultra-trail runners, and it is on this race that we get to find out what we are really worth,” he said. His stated hope is to be not only the first Réunionnais again, but the first outright, whether himself or one of his comrades from the island’s home-grown trail scene.
Bridging the gap with the professionals is, in his case, an exercise in borrowed time. Sautron divides his week between the trail and a job as a cleaning and maintenance operative at the Cinor, and it is his leave that pays for his ambition: he dedicates the whole of his holiday entitlement to preparation. In recent months he has doubled his efforts, training alongside Fabrice Payet, his teammate at Prudence Créole. In recent weeks he has lived, in training terms, like a professional: close to thirty hours a week, between 200 and 240 kilometres, and 14,000 metres of elevation gain. The purpose is to accustom the body to running through fatigue. “We try to put all the chances on our side to hold out as long as possible against them. Our little fifteen hours of training a week here is not enough,” he said. None of it, he adds, would be possible without his sponsor: “It is thanks to them that we manage to perform, because otherwise there are too many things to pay for; we are like everyone else.”
Meanwhile, the final days have brought a deliberate slowdown. “We bring the mileage down to rest,” he explained. Careful eating, food supplements and vitamins now fill the agenda, the batteries being charged before the start. He is confident without pretending the task is small. “It is going to be hard; every Grand Raid is hard, but if you are well trained, it should go well.”
Nothing in his background marked him out for this. Sautron discovered trail running at thirty, “at first just for fun”, he recalled, “to run a bit, visit the island, and lose a little weight”. He still runs for pleasure, eating what he likes but taking a little care before the big races. In less than ten years, the pastime turned into a serious record: five Diagonales des Fous and two editions of the Trail de Bourbon, the 106-kilometre ultra that is one of the Grand Raid’s five races.
The results explain why the island follows him. On his first Grand Raid race, the Trail de Bourbon in 2018, he took second place. A year later, on his first Diagonale, he finished ninth, and he has finished in the top ten in every edition since, with a single exception: the 2023 race, where he was forced to abandon at Deux Bras. In 2021, 2022 and 2024 he was the first Réunionnais home, eighth, eighth and then seventh overall, in a race that draws hundreds of athletes from around the world. After a sixth place on last year’s Trail de Bourbon, he decided to return to the Diagonale for a sixth participation.
He describes himself as a bon vivant who would not miss this festival for anything in the world. But the party he is heading towards carries a collective meaning, one he has framed himself: a strong result this week would not simply be his own. It would be another argument, made in the mountains, that runners from La Réunion belong at the very front. Whether the island’s twenty-year wait for a home winner ends on these 180 kilometres is the question residents will follow through the night of 15 October.