Alexandre Boucheix, nicknamed “Green Cap” has just won the tenth edition of the Ut4M, in Isère, by completing the event after 28 hours. A party animal and former heavy smoker, he has become an unlikely phenomenon in the world of ultra-trail, inspiring novices with his career and his successes.
La marseillaise à pétanque 2022, 61st edition of the world –
Saturday evening in Grenoble, Alexandre Boucheix added a new line to his prize list by winning the extreme endurance race of the Ultra tour of the four massifs (Ut4M), a 173 km course with 11,500 meters of elevation gain through the massifs. Alps of Vercors, Taillefer, Belledonne and Chartreuse, which he completed in 28 hours 28 minutes!
A month ago, he won the Ultra 01 (in Ain), 172 km run in 20 h 35 min.
“Basically I just wanted to do a half marathon“, tells AFP Alexandre Boucheix, evoking his beginnings as a runner, a green cap placed backwards on his head, a legacy of his student years that has become his distinctive sign on the trails and … social networks.
Its story begins at the coffee machine of a multinational. Young dynamic executive, Alexandre Boucheix is challenged by a colleague who is preparing to run an 80 km event. It was in 2015. The Parisian, a very athletic high school student, gained 25 kg during his business studies, “breasts, rolls” which does not bother him, but his curiosity is piqued.
He struggles at first but progresses very quickly. A 10 km, then the marathon, the trail and the ultra distance. Today, he has forty races including six victories over the last twelve months with a 43rd place on the world reference, the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB), before finishing 18th on the famous Diagonale des fous .
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“I discovered a world where you could have hallucinations like when I was on drugs but it’s legal, in the mountains, in a natural environment, while doing sports valued by others and for yourself.“, he explains, always with a touch of humor.
The boy with an impressive flow and a childish face now juggles between his “excel files” and his life sneakers in which he pushes his body to the limit.
This does not prevent him from gulping down a beer in one go once the finish line has been passed, a ritual now eagerly awaited by the community which is following him more and more on the networks. “It’s amazing, it’s crazy! There is a microcosm of the trail, as soon as you stand out, it can quickly do the trick“.
Mehdi Mainguené, a 44-year-old Breton, is one of those who discovered trail running thanks to “Capsquette Verte”. “He is a person who shows that it is possible, an atypical profile. He paved the way for people like me. It’s a modern image of the trail“, explains to AFP this Rennais, who started running two years ago.
Alexandre Boucheix explains his popularity by the fact that he is “someone like everyone else“. “We cannot identify with Kilian Mbappé but with an amateur player who goes to the final in the Coupe de France and who is a butcher next door. I do not want to say that I am the magic of the Coupe de France, that I am the Petit-Quevilly of the trail! But there is a bit of that“.
But he denies being an example to follow, he who swallows 5,000 calories a day – “if I don’t eat three times what someone normally eats, I don’t care“, who smoked like a firefighter until the promise of his 30th birthday last November, who runs 30 km a day and never misses an opportunity to party.
“Green Cap” is known as the white wolf in trail running. On the Ut4M, everyone only talks about him. But the guy from Saint-Mandé (Val-de-Marne) knows that all of this will only have a time.
“In my work, it lacks deep meaning, I would like to switch to a charitable world where there is a real background“, he projects himself.
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