Whakatāne’s Daniel Jones was one of two superstar New Zealand runners to dominate at the UTA50 at HOKA Ultra-Trail Australia.

He and Caitlin Fielder both powered to victory on their first visits to the iconic event, held in the New South Wales Blue Mountains.

Jones crossed the line in 4:01:19 to win the men’s race while Fielder covered the 50-kilometre course in 5:02:27 to take the tape in the women’s event.

Jones stood on the top step of the podium on his UTA debut, leading home Spain’s Miguel Benitez by more than 10 minutes, with another Kiwi, Sam Rout, third.

“It’s a hard race, it’s my first time here over in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, but it was awesome,” Jones said.

“Such a beautiful day, a little muddy but absolutely beautiful views and I actually got to appreciate them today rather than being in the fog like the last couple of days.

“As for the race itself, it’s hard. I mean the stairs; I didn’t expect so many between 10 and 20km. The ups, the downs, you’ve just got to take it as it comes but make sure that you’ve got something in the tank for the final 25km of the race.

“And I think I did that. I monitored my energy levels pretty well, my effort levels, and I was able to finish really strong.”

The top two ran together for the first half of the race before Jones put a gap on Benitez and didn’t look back.

“We were running together for the first 20ks and I might have only opened up about 15 seconds and then about a minute by the third aid station.

“I pulled away a little bit from there but then it was just about running my own race because I didn’t know how far he was behind.

“But it was a really good race by him as well; it was great racing between us,” he said.

Jones is preparing to take on some of the best trail runners in the world at Western States in America at the end of June.

“I’m right in the depths of a big build now, so I didn’t taper off too much.

“It looked like a pretty big week as well with this 50km tucked in at the end of it.”

On Monday, Jones headed to San Francisco, to Auburn, where he will do some heat training in altitude, then head across to Olympic Valley in mid-June.

“There’s a lot on, but I’m excited for it, feeling strong. Putting in a solid performance today is a good boost; you can’t weigh too much on one race because it’s all in the cycle of something big, but you’ve got to be happy with it.”

The women’s race was a tighter affair, with Fielder finishing four minutes ahead of fellow Kiwi Alison Wilson, with Demi Caldwell of Australia just behind to round out the podium.

“I’m pretty happy to be done but thrilled to have won the race. It was pretty tough to be honest, but I’m super happy,” said Fielder.

“It started off pretty quick with everyone along the way and then I just tried to run my own race, but I heard that Alison was closing in pretty hard in the end there, which made me pretty panicky.

“I had a few moments along the way, I dropped my sunglasses in the waterfall, stopped and looked for them but they had shot off, it was cool out there, though.”