Ivo Kunzle Savastano grew up nowhere near a mountain. In August 2026, the Paraguayan ultrarunner finished one of the toughest trail races in the world, high in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, USA. It took him 29 hours and 22 minutes on foot, and made him the first Paraguayan on record to complete it.
The race was the Leadville Trail 100 Run, held in a small mining town 3,000 metres up in the mountains. The 30-year-old, a former Paraguayan national swimmer, now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He also used the race to raise money for children and adults with intellectual disabilities in his adopted state.
From a swimming pool in Asunción to the Rocky Mountains
Kunzle grew up in Asunción, where he was a promising competitive swimmer, not a runner. He competed nationally for Club Centenario and represented Paraguay internationally, including at the 2014 Youth Pan-American Games, where he won a bronze medal.
“My time with the club and the national team were some of the best years of my life,” he tells The Asunción Times, recalling his coach, the Cuban Juan Pedro Hernández, with fondness.
In January 2017, Kunzle moved to the United States to swim for Carson-Newman University in Tennessee, graduating in 2020 with a degree in finance and economics. He then moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to be near family, where he met his wife, Hannah, and Adam Trubow, the American who introduced him to ultrarunning.
What is the Leadville Trail 100, and why does it matter?
Long-distance runners call it the “Race Across the Sky.” Born in 1983 to revive a struggling mining town, it climbs and descends more than 15,000 feet (4,570 metres) through the Rockies. It crosses Hope Pass, at 12,500 feet (3,810 metres), where the thin air makes breathing difficult. Runners have 30 hours to finish, and in most years fewer than half do. Kunzle’s finish was part of the Lead Challenge, an even more demanding series that bundles the 100-mile run with four other races over two months.
An unlikely convert to ultrarunning
Swimming ended the day he graduated. For a few years he tried different sports, until the mountains outside Albuquerque drew him into hiking, then running. “At first I doubted a lot about running a race as long as 100 miles, I had never even run a marathon,” Kunzle recalls. “What changed my mind was watching the impact of a Special Olympics fundraiser that Trubow had run the previous year.”
That decision took him to Huntsville, Texas, for his first ultramarathon, the Rocky Raccoon 100 Mile, before he set his sights on the Lead Challenge. “I do not plan to do this more than once, so I had to make it worth it.”
A summer of five races, disrupted by fire
Ivo Kunzle completed the Leadville Trail Marathon, billed as the United States’ toughest marathon, in June. His plans were then complicated by the Willow Fire, which burned nearly 7,200 acres of nearby forest and forced organisers to cancel some events.
When the fire cancelled the Silver Rush 50, Kunzle improvised. He covered the Grand Canyon’s rim-to-rim-to-rim route in Arizona instead: 46 miles (74 kilometres) with 11,500 feet (3,505 metres) of elevation gain, in punishing desert heat. He then completed the Leadville Trail 100 MTB and the Leadville 10K Run on consecutive days, before lining up on 22 August for the series finale, the Leadville Trail 100 Run.
“Of the five events, the 100-mile run was by far the hardest.” Sleep deprivation set in somewhere in the small hours, and the race became less about the legs than the mind. “It turns into a mental battle against yourself, against the pain and the tiredness. But you know there are people waiting for you at the finish, and you keep going until you are done.” His wife, Hannah, paced him through the night during the toughest stretch. “She was my pacer in the middle of the night, during the hardest part of the race.”
The Leadville Race Series says its finisher records are incomplete for some years. Based on the available records, Kunzle appears to be the first Paraguayan to have completed the race.
Running for Special Olympics New Mexico
Kunzle’s effort also served as a fundraiser for Special Olympics New Mexico, which supports athletes with intellectual disabilities across the state. The campaign, 100 Friends for 100 Miles, was founded by Trubow in 2019 and aims to raise US$100,000 in 2026; as of 25 August 2026, it had raised US$82,265.
Kunzle was drawn to the cause after meeting a Special Olympics athlete in Roswell, New Mexico. “One of the most genuine people I have met, good-hearted, and who gives his all in everything he does.” He had supported Trubow’s fundraiser as a donor and pacer before deciding to run it himself in 2026. He also pointed to Ben Blewett, a Special Olympics athlete training to become the first to complete a 100-mile ultramarathon, at the Javelina 100 in Arizona in October 2026. “It will be an incredible feat.”
What Leadville taught Ivo Kunzle
That distance from the mountains has never quite left him. “Whenever I look at the mountains, I feel very fortunate to be where I am. I feel like I found my place, and I thank God for the opportunity to do what I do.”
Looking back on the journey from a young swimmer in Asunción to a Rocky Mountain ultrarunner, he says it taught him something simple: “We are all capable of doing much more than we think we are. We should not be afraid of obstacles, no matter how big they seem, and we should always be willing to take on new challenges. You might just surprise yourself.”
Kunzle is not the only Paraguayan making a name for himself in Albuquerque. Christian Diaz de Bedoya, the Paraguayan location manager profiled by this newspaper for his work on Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and Pluribus, has called the New Mexico city home for three decades.
