© Kotcha
Kotcha, the running coaching app co-founded with Eliud Kipchoge, now welcomes Kilian Jornet
A few months ago, in late 2025, a French startup made headlines by partnering with Eliud Kipchoge to launch a running coaching app. Yes, there are already plenty of players in this space — but who else can claim to have both GOATs of endurance sports in their corner? Today, Kotcha makes a major move by announcing the arrival of Kilian Jornet. When it comes to breaking into the trail market, you’d be hard pressed to find a better ambassador. But the relationship these two legends share with the app runs far deeper than a standard sponsorship deal. With them on board, the app goes further — offering runners training plans generated directly from their personal training philosophies. Whether you’re preparing for a marathon or a trail race, training like a pro has never been more accessible.
| An app born in Kaptagat, built in Paris
So what exactly is Kotcha? It’s a new coaching app founded by three French running and tech enthusiasts: Ben Dupont, Michel-André Chirita, and Dimitri Dor. What sets the project apart is that from the very beginning, the trio had the direct involvement of Eliud Kipchoge — a true marathon legend — and his training team, the DSM-Firmenich Running Team (formerly the NN Running Team). In this project, Kipchoge is not just a marketing face: he is a genuine co-founder. The final product, the training methods — all of it bears his imprint.
In practice, the team worked on location in Kaptagat, Kenya, alongside Kipchoge and his coach Patrick Sang, to translate their training philosophy into something usable by everyday runners. That’s no small thing. The Kaptagat camp is the legendary place where the greatest marathoner in history was forged — the first man to run under two hours (in an unofficial race setting). Turning that into a method accessible to all is the slightly audacious ambition Kotcha has set for itself. Don’t worry — the app probably won’t recommend running 200 km a week, but you will get a glimpse into the sessions run by the marathon GOAT himself.
The app officially launched in October 2025, just before the New York City Marathon — Kipchoge’s final major race at the highest level, and the one that finally earned him his 6-star Abbott World Marathon Majors finisher medal. Well-timed, and internationally visible. Although founded by French entrepreneurs, the app is firmly global in its ambition — built to help as many runners as possible, wherever they are.
| Training like Eliud Kipchoge?
What sets Kotcha apart from competitors like Runna or Campus is, above all, the training philosophy it is built on. In France, the tendency is to structure plans around a VO2max session on Tuesday — short, intense efforts, lots of 30/30 intervals, 400m repeats on the track — and another intensity session on Thursday. In Kenya, marathon training looks very different: high volume, a heavy emphasis on threshold work, and near-daily consistency. Running is part of a way of life, not just a few-week program.
Kotcha embraces this approach. Plans are not randomly generated according to some generic coach’s philosophy — they directly reflect the methods developed by Patrick Sang, a Kenyan coach with worldwide recognition, and adapt week by week based on training data and user feedback. The plan can shift from one week to the next, depending on how runners feel. A genuine technological achievement that should help the many runners who feel lost when it comes to moving or skipping a session. The app is powered by its own AI, but the idea is not to replace a human coach — it’s to make a part of Patrick Sang’s expertise available to the widest possible audience.
| Kilian Jornet joins the project, opening up trail
But road running represents only part of the team’s ambitions. The announcement of June 17, 2026 marks a turning point for the project: Kilian Jornet — trail running royalty, multiple winner of UTMB and Hardrock, the GOAT for most — joins as an active partner in the development of the app. Not a simple ambassador: he is directly involved in building the product.
With this addition, there’s no longer any doubt: Kotcha wants to expand its reach beyond road running. Trail, ultra-trail, mountain racing, efforts of extreme duration — this is a world with its own codes, far removed from standardized marathon plans. Kilian Jornet will bring a vision built on over twenty years of competing at the very highest level.
His philosophy resonates with Kipchoge’s: volume, consistency, adaptation, recovery, long-term progression. No miracle formula, no shortcuts, and above all no copy-paste method. True to the Jornet mindset: understand your own body first. The era of rigid Excel spreadsheet training plans feels a long way away.
| How much does Kotcha cost?
This is one of the app’s strong suits: delivering champion-level expertise at an accessible price point. Concretely, the app offers four virtual coaches — a training coach, a nutritionist, a data analyst, and a strength and conditioning coach. It covers distances from 10K to marathon, and is compatible with Garmin, Apple Watch, and COROS. After a free one-week trial, the subscription is €14.99 per month, or a reduced rate of €109.99 per year for an annual commitment. Pricing that places Kotcha on a par with Runna or Campus.
Just a few months after launch, and following a €3.5M funding round, Kotcha already counts 50,000 subscribers worldwide. The future looks promising for this new coaching platform.
| Who is Kotcha for?
Kotcha is available worldwide on the App Store and Google Play, in seven languages including French. The app targets both the weekend runner preparing their first half marathon and the seasoned trail runner eyeing a mountain ultra. One thing is certain: with two ambassadors this influential, a portion of their fanbases will give the app a try. After all, it’s not every day you get the chance to train like these two champions.
In a running coaching app market that can seem saturated, Kotcha plays a different hand: no generic programs, but evolving plans and AI built on the training methods of the two greatest endurance athletes in history. On the road or on the trails, Kotcha is making its move among the leading remote coaching platforms. With ambitions this high and Kipchoge and Jornet in its corner, the app’s legitimacy is hard to dispute. Whether the promise holds over time remains to be seen — but the free one-week trial might just be the best way to find out for yourself.
✓ Find all information about the Kotcha app on the official website.
Clément LABORIEUX
Journalist
