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Mermoud’s Magic: The Story of Western States and Hoka

Jeffrey Stern 09/07/2023
Jeffrey Stern 09/07/2023
1.9K

Sponsored by Hoka


An accomplished alpine skier, mountaineer, adventurer and all-around athlete for his entire life, France’s Nico Mermoud is intimately familiar with being at the forefront of innovation.

After being heavily involved with the freeski movement and tackling events like the Eco Challenge adventure race, the bridge to Mermoud’s ties with the trail and ultrarunning world seemed like destiny.

Close friend Topher Gaylord, a member of the Western States board of directors, remembers first connecting him with that world at the earliest editions of Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB). While in Chamonix, Mermoud met with Vincent Delabarre who won the 2004 UTMB and spoke with excitement about the opportunity to run a race in California called the Western States Endurance Run. Forever enamored with adventurous travel to mountainous regions around the world, Mermoud dove into researching the race and learning about its storied history.

At first, he didn’t comprehend how the course could be so vast. To Mermoud it was, “The race across some western states and the first thing I couldn’t figure out and understand was, how you could cross maybe two or three states in the same race?” His interest far outweighed his confusion.

Before he would ever step foot on the famed trail, Mermoud’s creative mind was diving deep into trail running and its intersection with innovation.

At the time, the hottest footwear trend was Born to Run-inspired — low profile and minimal cushion, coupled with absolute maximum ground feel and sensation for the feet. Gaylord described Mermoud as, “A creative guy that lived between product concepts and marketing, always one who thinks differently.” The type of innovator that looked at a sport and didn’t think how he could do things better, but rather how he could transform the sport itself. It was logic that he used to connect freestyle skiing to what he interpreted to be the demands of his newfound passion in ultrarunning and more specifically, the net downhill Western States profile.

In the fall of 2009, after spending the better part of half a decade becoming an accomplished ultrarunner himself, Mermoud came to visit Gaylord in Los Angeles under the premise of running the Catalina Marathon. “Like a classic footwear entrepreneur, he pulls up in his car, opens the trunk and, like crown jewels, he pulls out these shoes,” Gaylord recalled. “I’ll never forget it, we both put on a pair of HOKA shoes—they were called Hubbles at the time—and we ran down through Venice Beach and out to the pier together.” Gaylord thought the ride and cushioning were incredible but remained skeptical about the stack height and polar opposite nature of the current craze in the running footwear market.

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