Hoka One One is going to replace Tecnica as footwear sponsor of the legendary Tor des Géants, which will start in Courmayeur on Sept. 10 and run through 17, joining Ferrino, Garmin, GoPro, Montane and other brands. Regarded by some as the toughest ultratrail race on earth, it covers 330 km in the Aosta Valley of northeastern Italy, going through 34 villages and 25 mountain passes, with a total elevation gain of about 24 km. Two founders of Hoka, Jean-Luc Diard and Christophe Aubonnet, will participate in the endurance race. It's going to be the first attempt for Aubonnet. Diard ran the race last year, but gave up after about 200 km. In the past few years, about 60 percent of the participants have not completed it. Tecnica decided to sponsor the race from 2011, one year after the event was launched, while Diard, a former president of Salomon, was managing Tecnica's outdoor shoe business. In 2008, Nicolas Mermoud, another co-founder of Hoka, which is now a property of Deckers Brands, scored third as a runner in another race, the Ultra Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB). One of Hoka's current brand ambassadors, Tim Tollefson, came third in the recently finished 2017 edition of the 170-km race.

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