Discover “L’Esprit du Trail”, the podcast behind ASICS’s trail-running success story

On August 30, 2025, in Chamonix, Tom Evans won the UTMB Mont-Blanc after 170 kilometres of racing. A few minutes later, his teammate Ben Dhiman crossed the finish line in second, giving the ASICS team a historic one-two finish in one of the world’s most iconic trail races. But every victory has a story behind it. And behind the pursuit of performance lies one essential belief: the athlete’s health must always come first.

© UTMB Group

With “L’Esprit du Trail, by ASICS”, ASICS offers a three-part immersion into its team, exploring everything that happens beyond podiums and finish times: building a collective, trust, passing knowledge on, innovation, and a long-term approach to high performance that never separates sporting progress from balance and health.

This approach directly reflects the philosophy behind the brand’s name: “Anima Sana In Corpore Sano”, a sound mind in a sound body. Within the team, that belief translates into tangible support for its athletes: medical monitoring, individualised training, injury prevention, recovery, listening to the body and attention to each athlete’s overall balance.

© UTMB Group

Through the voices of Tom Evans, Ben Dhiman, Xavier Thévenard, Maud Mathys, Sylvaine Cussot, Marie Goncalves and Thomas Lorblanchet and the people supporting them, the podcast traces a sporting and human adventure built over more than a decade, centred on one idea: the greatest performance is the one that can be sustained over time.

Episode 1 - The Victory

From Tom Evans and Ben Dhiman’s historic one-two finish to Xavier Thévenard’s three UTMB victories, this episode goes back to the origins of the ASICS team and explores how performance is built over time.

Episode 2 - The Family Spirit
In an individual sport, the collective can make all the difference. Athletes and staff share the team culture of trust, collaboration and individual attention that is essential for runners to improve and thrive.

Episode 3 - The Never-Ending Story
Health, training, data, prevention, knowledge-sharing and the next generation: the final episode reveals the systems built around the athletes to support them over the long term. These are principles every runner can also apply to their own practice.

Across its three episodes, L’Esprit du Trail shows that sporting success is built on more than kilometres run, training plans or technology. Doctors, coaches, performance specialists and team managers work together towards the same goal: enabling athletes to fulfil their potential while protecting their physical health and overall balance.

In an endurance sport where the body is subjected to extreme stress, that focus is fundamental. For ASICS, looking after the athlete is not separate from performance: it is its essential condition.

Although the podcast takes listeners behind the scenes of elite sport, its lessons reach far beyond professional competition: listening to your body, respecting recovery, progressing consistently, adapting your training and preserving the joy of running are principles that apply to every athlete.

Joël Doux, a journalist and editor specialising in trail running and the outdoors, was notably the editor-in-chief of Trail Endurance for 20 years. A close observer of the sport’s evolution, he knows its athletes, races and the stories that have shaped its growth.

Alongside him, Timothée Borne brings his expertise in sound production. He is the co-founder and director of BLYND, a company specialising in audiobooks and immersive audio content. He also runs Studio Anatole, a studio recognised for its work in dubbing, voice production and audio post-production.

Martin Quenehen, an author, screenwriter and podcast producer, contributed to writing the voiceovers for all three episodes. After working at France Culture, where he created numerous documentaries and cultural programmes, he is notably the writer and director of the podcast series Les Enquêtes du Louvre. He is also a comic-book writer and has created several contemporary adventures featuring Corto Maltese.

From the meeting of these three fields of expertise, an intimate knowledge of trail running, documentary writing and sound production, came a podcast built around the athletes, their testimonies and their lived experience.

“L’Esprit du Trail, by ASICS” is therefore less a succession of performances than a portrait of how they are built: over time, collectively and with the conviction that no sporting result can be separated from the health of the people who make it possible.