Qualifying took place on Saturday with the men up first. Jacky Godoffe was in charge of the setting and that means just one thing: WHACKY problems designed to stress the competitor's muscles, boggle their minds and extract every ounce of tenacity, grit and determination they might possess. Needless to say I felt sorry for the guys when their first problem involved a running start onto volumes, followed by crimping and balancing your way up what can only be described as pebbly papules; sounds like a gritstone experience with Johnny Dawes!! Enough of my digressing, the round went mostly to plan with all the big guns making it through including our very own Dave Barrans. Chapeau Dave!

Next it was the ladies turn and with Coxsey, Leslie-Wujastyk and Crane having made it through all qualifying rounds this year we were set to have four Brits in the semis. Luckily they all mastered enough of Godoffe's problems to put them into Sunday's semi-finals

Come Sunday Morning and Jacky had managed to create a wall that looked like it should be part of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory; great, colourful, voluminous blobs adorned the psychedelic green plywood, boy were these problems a step up from yesterday. To make sure I stay under a thousand words I will be brief here - Mina and Leah will have been disappointed with their climbing and they finished 14th and 17th respectively. They are both oh so capable of making finals but they just need that little bit of luck to float their way. Dave came tantalisingly close to finals finishing in 8th; his best result this year and it will hopefully put some mojo back in his climbing shoes and Shauna, well Shauna did it again qualifying 4th into the finals. Bravo youth!

The biggest shocks were in the mens semis where Killian, Jakob, Rustam and Gui-Gui all failed to commence into the finals.

So to the finals..... After dashing out to go and climb some wet rock I arrive back to see even more colourful blobs on the wall than before, maybe Jacky is secretly Willy Wonka?! The problems looked phenomenal; a real mind boggle. Jacky had even set a climb for each that could be climbed on the left or the right! If you don't follow you will have to watch back the video of the finals below. I have never seen this type of setting before and I think Jacky might have actually lost his mind but it sure did make for interesting viewing!

The women's climbs were hard and the men's harder. Sean McColl managed to walk up three out of the four finals climbs and looked dominant throughout. I am always surprised with his ability to lock off on one arm after two hard days competing to celebrate but it does make for good showmanship! Jan Hojer took silver with World Champion and current WC leader Dmitrii Sharafutdinov taking bronze.

In the women's Melissa Le Neve of France pushed Anna Stöhr all the way to the wire and in the end it came down to attempts on bonus holds. Anna had got a bonus two attempts faster than Melissa; very close indeed and a great come back for Melissa who has been slightly off the boil so far this year. Miss Coxsey managed another bronze, when will it be gold?! Not long am sure of that Shauna!

And that sums up my first WC report. I hope you have enjoyed it; I really do want to get people into these comps and behind the GB team. It is a really exciting time at the moment and with lots of the next generation psyched on comps we should definitely watch this space and give them all the support we can.

Each report I want to pay homage to the biggest blunder and most wonderful wonder of the comp.

This weekend's blunder goes to........ Drum roll please.......

THE ROUTE SETTERS for allowing Jon Partridge to pull a volume off the wall.

And the wonder is awarded to Thomas Tauporn for having 17 attempts before topping on bloc 1 of the men's qualifiers; maybe he should come and climb on gritstone pebbles!

And that sums up my first WC report. I hope you have enjoyed it; I really do want to get people into these comps and behind the GB team. It is a really exciting time at the moment and with lots of the next generation psyched on comps we should definitely watch this space and give them all the support we can.

A word from David Mason, the new WC reporter at UKC:

Being British we do a lot of our climbing indoors due to the wonderful weather that we are blessed with. Now surely this should relate to competition glory you ask yourself?! Well actually it doesn't seem to have...until recently that is!

We have had some brilliant results in the past-Simon Nadin beating French rock god Didier Raboutou in front of a home crowd in 1989, Malcolm Smith winning in Lecco in 2002, Mark Croxall took gold on home turf in 2005 and Andrew Earl won on the French Island of Reunion in 2007.

Others to have made finals include Gaz Parry, Stewart Watson, Dave Barrans and Ned Feehally but last year things really started to change for the GB bouldering team. Shauna Coxsey left the junior team and in her first year on the senior tour managed to make every final, finishing in 3rd overall at the end of 2012.

Fast forward to May 2013 and I emailed Jack at UKC asking if I could take over the writing of the WC reports; he gladly palmed them off onto me; one less job for an already busy man!

You may ask yourself why I wanted to write these reports, why take on the responsibility?! The answer is easy; UKC is big in the climbing world and if I can entertain you with a few hundred words and some colourful pictures whilst promoting how bloody well the GB team are starting to do and obviously give some unbiased details as well, then why the hell not!