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IFSC Bouldering World Cup – Vail, the U.S.
The last but one, 5th edition of the Bouldering World Cup organized by the IFSC took place at the beginning of June in Vail, Colorado. For some of the regular partcipants, the annual trip to the United States is always a bit of a question mark due to the generalny high travel expenses. This year however, apart from the absence of two of the strongest canditates for the overall victory, Dmitrii Sharafutdinov and Rustam Gelmanov of Russia, the audience could admire the strength and technique of the rest of the world’s top female and male boulderers.
As it had been expected, the finale gathered such names as Schubert, Glairon Mondet, Sean McColl or Kilian Fischhuber, who actually won this year’s Vail edition giving 2 attempts less on the final boulders than the aforementioned Sean McColl of Canada. The biggest surprise was given by only 20-year-old Jan Hojer of Germany, whose brillant performance gave him his first bronze medal in the senior bouldering WC.
The subsequent victory of Austria (after the WC edition in Innsbruck) wouldn’t have been complete if it hadn’t been for Anna Stöhr, who once again proved to be the most talented and experienced female boulder competitior that the world has ever seen. Anna, as the only one, reached all 4 Tops in the final round, this way outperforming Shauna Coxsey, an extraordinary girl from Great Britain, and Juliane Wurm of Germany, who seems to be getting back to the great shape from the last year’s season.
The invincible Anna Stöhr (photo: Heiko Wilhelm)
The 5th edition of the Bouldering World Cup did not turned out to be the lucky one for one of the favourites in the women’s category. Akiyo Noguchi, with only 2 Tops in the semi-fanal, ended up 11th, which means that she irrecoverably lost her chance for claiming the overall ranking victory. In the case of women, seems like no one can threaten the invincible Anna Stöhr, who actually can already celebrate her next World Cup title.
When it comes to men, the riddle is not solved yet. There are two competitors ranked #1 in the overall ranking, Kilian Fischhuber and absent in Vail Rustam Gelmanov, both with 345 points. The 3rd place is still occupied by Jakob Schubert (260 points), who after a great beginning of the season didn’t manage to repeat his success from Chongqing.
The Bouldering World Cup final edition is going to take place on August 25 and 26 in Munich and apart from that stay tuned for the IFSC Climbing World Championship, this time in Paris, France and scheduled for September 12-16.
Here's a short film coverage of what was going on this year in Vail: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=s3F8SMGBx0c
The complete results from Vail are available here: http://www.ifsc-climbing.org/?page_name=&category_id=231&header=latest+result&w_rkey=12_WC_VA
For the current ranking positions, check out http://www.ifsc-climbing.org/?page_name=ranglist
The official IFSC Calendar is to be fund here: http://www.ifsc-climbing.org/?category_id=230
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