The French classic in Serre Chevalier ranks among the best events in the world for pros to go toe-to-toe with other top global climbers.

This years edition held July 25th & 26th was no different. Three of the best male competition climbers, Ramon Julian Puigblanque, a clean shaven Patxi Usobiaga and Tomas Mrazek, battled it out in the French Alps for a chance to stand on the hollowed podiums of Serre Chevalier.

In the first round Ramon faltered surprising low on the 8b route, leaving the door wide open for the rest of the field. But Usobiaga and Mrazek dominated the first route waving to Ramon from the anchors.

Would Puigblanque be able to recover his typical destroying style in time for

Finals? With Usobiaga and Mrazek now both tied going into Finals this route would have to do what few routes can do: separate two of the strongest climbers competing in the world.

This Finals route which featured almost more volumes than bolt-on holds and ran a distance of 24 meters didn’t quite cut it. Both Mrazek and Usabiaga fell at the exact same place and hence were still tied. But it was Puigblanque that came and stole the route. Cruising to a unique finish that involved toping out a huge protruding volume Ramon came away with the win and all the glory.

But what to do with the second place tie? I guess we’ll never know because it was never broken, but my best guess is that there was no super final prepared and thus no where to put the burly duo.

The women on the other hand put on quite a show for the massive audience that gathered beneath the huge 230 meters squared wall. The two females predicted to win, Natalija Gros and Angela Eiter did not bring their A-game to France. So who did? How about Slovak Mina Markovic, Japans mysterious Yuka Kobayaski and the Swiss surprise Alexandra Eyer.

With clean separation in semi’s they headed to finals. Perhaps the setters sensing something only setters can sense, eased up the final which allowed for two tops, Markovic and Kobayaski with Eyer only 4 points behind. This should be end of the story. Even though there was a tie in finals count-backs should have been the separator. But again for some unknown reason the organizers and setters decided to put the two top girls into a super (the mens final).

The result was undeniable: Markovic blew Kobayakski away by 23 points on a route that was meant for the big boys.

You can find more great pictures and full results at the event website. It should be noted that this comp is not an official World Cup event and does not count toward overall IFSC rankings.