GRAND RAID DES PYRÉNÉES HISTORY: FROM 420 RUNNERS TO 8,000
A small association in the Hautes-Pyrénées put on two mountain races in 2008, one of 75 kilometers and one of 150. Between them they drew 420 entries. Only 43 of the 241 runners who started the long race reached the finish.
That event became the Grand Raid des Pyrénées, which now brings close to 8,000 runners to a village of 304 people every August.
From 420 runners to 8,000
The 2008 finish rate says most of what needs saying about the original course. Fewer than one in five starters completed the 150 kilometers, a figure that would be treated as a course design problem at most modern races.
By 2010 the organizers had settled the long race at 160 kilometers and participation had roughly tripled. The event has grown steadily since, and the 2025 edition took 7,850 entries across its program.
That growth of roughly twentyfold in under two decades tracks the wider expansion of trail running in Europe over the same period. What separates the Grand Raid des Pyrénées from most events on that curve is that it did not change hands, restructure around a global series, or move away from the village it started in.
Vielle-Aure remains the start, the finish and the administrative center of the whole operation. The village cannot absorb an event of that size on its own, and neighboring communes take on much of the load. More than 800 volunteers work the race, a number larger than the population of the host village by a factor of more than two.
The Ultra Tour
The flagship distance covers 160 kilometers with 10,000 meters of climbing. It runs as a single large loop rather than an out and back, which is unusual at that distance in the Alps and Pyrenees.
The high point sits at 2,502 meters and the low point at 498 meters, a vertical range of just over 2,000 meters that runners cross repeatedly. A loop of that shape means no section is run twice, and no runner sees the same aid station on the way out and the way back.
The route passes the Tourmalet, Barèges and the Pic du Midi de Bigorre, and takes in the cirques of Gavarnie, Estaubé and Troumouse. Those glacial amphitheaters are the recognizable landmarks of the French Pyrenees, and the course was built to link as many of them as a single loop allows.
Terrain alternates between trail, ski runs, rock and high mountain paths connecting lakes and refuges. Long sections require hiking with poles rather than running, and the race rewards runners who are comfortable moving uphill for hours without a runnable break.
Winning times reflect that. Men have typically finished in 24 to 25 hours and women in 30 to 32. Many 100 miles races worldwide are run considerably faster over comparable distance, and the gap is a fair measure of what the course demands.
The men's winners
Gwendal Moysan won in 2025 in 21:49:07, the fastest winning time in the race's recorded results and well inside the range the course usually produces.
Rémi Gillie won in 2024 in 24:39:00 and Guilhermo Lourenço in 2023 in 23:54:16. Robin Coinus took the 2022 title in 26:30:20, the slowest winning time among recent editions.
Earlier results follow the same pattern. Guillaume Beauxis won in 2016 in 24:42:00 and Patrick Bohard in 2014 in 25:03:00.
Across more than a decade the men's winning time has moved within a band of about five hours, which is narrow for a course this exposed to weather. Moysan's 2025 run sits nearly two hours clear of anything else on record here, and it is the only men's result under 22 hours.
The women's winners
Jocelyne Pauly won in 2025 in 27:40:39, a substantial improvement on the times that had won the race in the preceding years.
Anne Champagne won in 2024 in 31:23:00, finishing more than two hours ahead of the next woman. The Quebec runner's margin was the largest recorded in the women's race.
Céline Finas won in 2023 in 31:33:25 and Carole Duhart in 2022 in 32:15:51. Hélène Haegel won in 2016 in 33:27:00 and Véronique Chastel in 2014 in 30:40:00.
Pauly's 2025 time was nearly four hours faster than the 2024 winning mark. It is the only women's result on record here under 28 hours, and it moved the women's benchmark by a larger margin than any single edition had before.
The 2025 edition therefore produced record winning times in both fields on the same weekend, which is uncommon at a course where conditions vary as much as they do here.
The wider program
The Ultra Tour is one race among eight timed events. Distances run from 40 to 160 kilometers, with climbing from 2,400 to 10,000 meters.
Below the Ultra Tour sits the Tour des Cirques at 120 kilometers with 7,500 meters of climbing, which takes its name from the glacial amphitheaters it crosses and starts from Piau rather than Vielle-Aure. Entry to that race is capped at 800 runners.
The rest of the program descends in steps. The Tour des Lacs covers 80 kilometers, the Tour du Moudang 60, the Tour du Bastan 50, and the Tour de la Gela 40 with 3,400 meters of climbing. The Tour du Néouvielle rounds out the list at just over 40 kilometers.
A relay version of the Ultra Tour lets teams of four split the flagship distance between them, starting at 5 a.m. alongside the solo field. It brings in runners who want the course without the full commitment.
Three children's races run alongside the adult program, and the schedule spreads across most of a week rather than a single weekend. Races start on different days and at different hours, which is what allows a village the size of Vielle-Aure to handle the volume at all. The 2026 edition runs from August 19 to 23.
Getting in
Demand now exceeds capacity across most of the program, and entry runs through pre-registration followed by a draw. Runners register during a window in January, and the draws for all races are held together later that month.
The system carries some unusual features. Runners can enter as a group of up to 10 and be drawn as a unit, which is aimed at couples and clubs who want to race together rather than risk being split. A runner can also enter more than one race in the same week, taking the Tour de la Gela on the Thursday and the Tour des Lacs on the Saturday, for example.
A nominal fee of one euro per pre-registration covers the administrative cost of running the draws. Entry to the Tour des Cirques has run at 175 euros with a later increase to 187, which places the event well below the pricing of the larger international series races.
The event also fields a joëlette category, which allows people with reduced mobility to take part in a single-wheeled trail chair pushed and guided by a team. That category is not a demonstration event, and it runs on the same terrain as everything else.
World Trail Majors
The Grand Raid des Pyrénées is part of the World Trail Majors circuit, which positions itself as an alternative to the UTMB World Series and is built around independent races that have kept their own organizations and their own entry systems.
Two of the event's races count toward the circuit. The Ultra Tour scores in the main series, and the Tour du Néouvielle scores in the Short Series.
The Tour du Néouvielle runs just over 40 kilometers with 2,400 meters of climbing and a high point of 2,495 meters. It compresses the character of the longer courses into a race that the leading men usually finish in around four hours, taking in lakes, passes, technical sections and sustained climbing.
Membership in that circuit has raised the international share of the field. The 2025 entry list drew runners from across Europe, Japan and elsewhere, and the elite races now attract athletes who would previously have chosen an event in the Alps.
Following the race
Live tracking covers the full program, and the longer races are streamed through the event's own channels and through World Trail Majors. The Ultra Tour starts at 5 a.m., which means the leaders reach the highest sections of the course in daylight and the bulk of the field crosses them overnight.
The valley itself does a good deal of the promotional work. Vielle-Aure sits in the Vallée d'Aure, and the surrounding ski resorts and communes treat the race week as part of their summer season rather than as an intrusion into it. Piau-Engaly, which hosts the start of the Tour des Cirques, is a ski station repurposed for the event.
What the race is
The Grand Raid des Pyrénées has never chased the profile of the larger European ultras. It has grown without changing what it is, which is a hard mountain race on the French side of a range that gets far less attention than the Alps.
The organizers describe the course as beautiful and tough in about equal measure, and the finish rates back up the second half of that. The race has remained locally run and heavily volunteer-staffed through all of that growth, and the entry numbers suggest the model has not cost it anything.
For runners looking for 10,000 meters of climbing across a single loop, it remains one of the more distinctive options in European ultrarunning.
The 2026 edition is scheduled for August 19.