The Long Way to Cappadocia
Salomon Cappadocia Ultra Trail 2026: 78 Countries, Four Course Records, One Extraordinary Landscape
For Nick Coats, getting to the starting line meant running across three countries.
The British runner arrived in Ürgüp after covering 1,700 kilometers through Albania, Greece, and Türkiye in 37 days. His family, girlfriend, and local residents welcomed him with British and Turkish flags. Ahead lay the race he had traveled so far to reach: the Salomon Cappadocia Ultra Trail.
Another 119 kilometers.
His extraordinary arrival was one story among the 2,961 runners from 78 countries who gathered in central Türkiye for the event’s 13th edition, held October 16–18, 2026. Across four distances—119K, 63K, 38K, and 14K—the weekend brought elite competition and personal ambition into Cappadocia’s valleys, with four course records falling along the way.
For the fastest runners, the challenge was measured in hours and seconds.
For everyone, it began with the same invitation: follow the trail into a landscape usually admired from a distance.
Where the Landscape Sets the Pace
Cappadocia’s familiar photographs favor the wide view: valleys, sculpted rock formations, and the distinctive pillars known as fairy chimneys.
A trail race changes the perspective.
The valley becomes a descent. The ridge becomes a climb. The rock that gives a photograph its shape also determines where a runner can place a foot.
Starting and finishing in Ürgüp, the longest course connected settlements and landscapes across the region, passing through Zemi Valley, Göreme, Pigeon Valley, Uçhisar, and Love Valley before returning through further stretches of countryside. Footpaths and rocky ground made this a journey that demanded attention as well as endurance.
The human history belongs to that same rock. Across Göreme National Park and the Rock Sites of Cappadocia, recognized by UNESCO, communities carved homes and places of worship into the landscape. The region’s rock-cut sanctuaries preserve Byzantine art; its settlements reveal centuries of life shaped around the terrain.
Running here brings those two histories together: a landscape shaped by erosion, then inhabited, adapted, and crossed by people.
The race offered several ways into it. Friday’s 14K opened the competition, while Saturday brought the 119K and 63K starts at 7 a.m., followed by the 38K at 10 a.m. Choosing a shorter distance still meant entering the valleys under your own power—and finding out how different they look from within.
The Miles Before—and Beyond—the Race
Coats had given his journey a purpose beyond reaching Cappadocia.
His project, UNBOUND: Break the Silence, carried a message about men’s mental health. Once on the race course, he described continuing with thousands of kilometers already in his legs.
“The body is tired, but the mission hasn’t changed,” he wrote.
Elsewhere in the field, distance had taken on a different meaning.
Russia’s Aleksei Beresnev and Antonina Iushina won the men’s and women’s 63K races while preparing for a forthcoming 100-mile event in Australia. After finishing, Iushina wrote that she felt as though she still had another 100 kilometers to run. Her victory led a Russian sweep of the women’s podium.
For some runners, Cappadocia was the culmination of a long journey. For others, it was a demanding stop on the way to something longer.
Back in Ürgüp, the weekend also made room for much smaller strides. Around 250 children took part in the Salcano Cappadocia Children’s Run, with parents applauding them along the course. Its message—“Run for the Climate, Keep Heritage Alive”—connected their first race experiences with the future of the place around them.
The same square that welcomed ultrarunners belonged, for a while, to children discovering the excitement of reaching a finish line.
Four Records Among the Valleys
On the longest course, Vasilii Korytkin and Tuğçe Karakaya set the standard.
Korytkin won the men’s 119K in 10:38:35, finishing more than 50 minutes ahead of France’s Alexandre Boucheix. Karakaya took the women’s title in 12:13:49, ahead of fellow Turkish runner Beyza Güzel. Both performances were course records.
Karakaya’s time also placed her ahead of the third finisher in the men’s race—an especially striking measure of her performance across the full distance.
The other two records came in Friday’s 14K. Can Ayaz broke the hour with 59:15, while Liudmila Sapronenkova won the women’s race in 1:08:30, just 20 seconds ahead of Aliaksandra Sakalouskaya.
In the 38K, Halil Yaşın and Elif Gökçe Avcı Ataman claimed the men’s and women’s victories.
The Podiums
119K Ultra Trail — Women
🥇 Tuğçe Karakaya, Türkiye — 12:13:49 · Course record
🥈 Beyza Güzel, Türkiye — 13:11:57
🥉 Charlotte Fisher, United Kingdom — 14:02:00
119K Ultra Trail — Men
🥇 Vasilii Korytkin, Russia — 10:38:35 · Course record
🥈 Alexandre Boucheix, France — 11:28:49
🥉 Mustafa Dağdelen, Türkiye — 12:25:33
63K Medium Trail — Women
🥇 Antonina Iushina, Russia — 6:03:53
🥈 Ekaterina Luzina, Russia — 6:32:37
🥉 Natalia Tarasova, Russia — 6:41:29
63K Medium Trail — Men
🥇 Aleksei Beresnev, Russia — 4:58:36
🥈 Mehmet Soytürk, Türkiye — 5:27:52
🥉 Oğuzhan Emre Singer, Türkiye — 5:41:34
38K Short Trail — Women
🥇 Elif Gökçe Avcı Ataman, Türkiye — 3:29:58
🥈 Anastasia Nikolaeva, Türkiye — 3:42:15
🥉 Dudu Erol, Türkiye — 3:56:42
38K Short Trail — Men
🥇 Halil Yaşın, Türkiye — 2:36:07
🥈 Mestan Turhan, Türkiye — 2:44:11
🥉 Kristiyan Ivanov, Bulgaria — 2:49:49
14K Mini Trail — Women
🥇 Liudmila Sapronenkova, Russia — 1:08:30 · Course record
🥈 Aliaksandra Sakalouskaya, Belarus — 1:08:50
🥉 Tuğba Akın, Türkiye — 1:10:37
14K Mini Trail — Men
🥇 Can Ayaz, Türkiye — 59:15 · Course record
🥈 Anton Bordiukov, Russia — 1:00:17
🥉 Burakhan Öztaş, Türkiye — 1:03:05
Why Cappadocia Stays With You
After a weekend measured in kilometers and finishing times, Cappadocia leaves a different kind of memory.
A trail winding between fairy chimneys. Homes carved into rock. Children running through Ürgüp’s square, their parents applauding every small stride.
Choosing what stays with you is harder than choosing what to photograph.
Maybe it’s the sight of runners threading through valleys whose strange formations you once knew only from pictures.
Maybe it’s a child reaching the finish in the same town where ultrarunners return after hours on the trails.
Or maybe it’s realizing that a place you had always wanted to see can become somewhere you have a personal reason to return to—with someone to cheer for, a distance to attempt, or another valley to explore.
The results tell you who was fastest through Cappadocia.
The trails leave you wondering which way you would go.
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