Blazing a trail

Growing up as the youngest of six children in a home perched halfway up a mountainside in Liupanshui, Southwest China's Guizhou province, Yao Miao spent much of her childhood carrying a bamboo basket into the highlands.

She dug for potatoes, foraged for wild vegetables and picked corn to help feed her family. In those days, her deepest wish was to leave those mountains behind and embrace a wider world.

Today, she runs toward the mountains as a professional trail runner — no longer to escape them, but to let them define and crown her.

In late August, Yao claimed the women's title in the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB) Orsieres-Champex-Chamonix (OCC) — a 61-kilometer race around Mont Blanc. It meant that, along with her women's victory in the 100.1km Courmayeur-Champex-Chamonix race (CCC) in 2018 and her women's OCC title in 2024, she made history by becoming the first and only Asian athlete of any gender to win three UTMB titles in different event categories.

At 16, Yao enrolled in a sports school in Liupanshui, training to compete in the 5,000m and 10,000m. However, in Guizhou, often referred to as the "cradle of China's endurance athletes", she faced a hugely talented field and, ultimately, failed to make for Guizhou provincial track and field team.

After graduating in 2016, Yao went to Jiangxi province to live with one of her sisters and attempted to make a living as a makeup artist. Reluctant to give up her sporting dream, though, she insisted on getting up at 5 am every day to run.

That year marked a period of rapid growth for trail running competitions across China.

In pursuit of prize money, at the end of 2016, Yao borrowed 1,000 yuan ($141) from a friend and took a 33-hour hard-seat train ride from Jiangxi to Zhangye, Gansu province, to participate in her first 100km trail race. Exhaustion from the journey and altitude sickness forced her to withdraw midway through.

Unwilling to accept the failure, she resolved to challenge another 100km high-altitude race around Gongga Mountain in Sichuan province just three weeks later. Unexpectedly, Yao secured her first women's championship title with an overwhelming lead — 90 minutes ahead of the second-place finisher.

"That remains my most unforgettable race to this day. After winning that race, I gained more confidence and became even more determined to dedicate myself to trail running," Yao recalled.

Over the following year, she dominated China's trail running scene, competing in races ranging from 20km to 120km. She claimed victory in all but two short-distance vertical races, where she finished as runner-up.