Kílian Jornet Burgada

“I have always found serenity in solitude. For me, three is a crowd. As much with family as among friends, I have always felt like the person who has one foot in and one foot out. Like someone who feels at ease for a moment, every once in a while. In a world that is so connected and so social, I have never wanted to belong to any tribe.”

“In the end, Above the Clouds is not about what I have achieved but about what I have experienced, about feeling at peace with my values when I do something and embracing the possibility of change and failure as a reward for my soul.”

“In federated sports, this performance is judged by rules and regulations. But in the mountains, these rules and regulations are meaningless. Mountains are (still) a space of freedom, where lawlessness reigns for the good of everyone.”

“A race is like a work of art; it is a creation that requires not only technique and work but also inspiration to reach a satisfactory outcome. But, also, it is ephemeral, because like a Buddhist mandala, the enjoyment comes in the creating of it; at the moment of climax, at the point when it has reached its perfection, it disappears and will be impossible to create exactly ever again. There can be no repeats; we can relive similar emotions and experience familiar sensations, but they will never take the same shape, because inspiration leads us to explore different forms.”

“Perhaps I run because I need to feel creative. I need to know what is inside me and then see it realized somewhere outside me. We can explore our inner selves and know what we are capable of, but perhaps we also need to externalize that and separate it out from our bodies in order to view it as spectators, in order to evaluate it and see the defects so that we can do it again, better. It is a pleasure intrinsic to the creation of beauty.”