The 2018 IFSC World Championships in Lead kicked off the 10-day biennial event in Innsbruck, Austria at the weekend. On home turf, Austrian climbers Jessica Pilz and Jakob Schubert won Gold in a packed out OlympiaWorld complex. Two members of the GB team made semi-finals: Molly Thompson-Smith placed 11th in an impressive return to competing post-injury - one place out of finals - while Will Bosi finished 13th.

In the women's event, Jessica Pilz (AUT), Janja Garnbret (SLO), Jain Kim (KOR) and Anak Verhoeven (BEL) all topped the semi-final route and headed into finals in =1st. 10 women qualified for the finals instead of 8, due to two tied scores for 1st and 7th place. Following her first World Cup win in Chamonix in July, all eyes were on Jessica Pilz as she climbed in front of her home crowd and gave Janja Garnbret a run for her money. A smooth top in the final put the pressure on Janja to match Jessica's performance in a quicker time (due to separate qualifying groups, there was no countback to qualifiers in this event.) Janja topped in a time 7 seconds slower than Jessica's ascent to take 2nd place - despite having topped every route in the competition.

The men's qualification round was overshadowed by an unfortunate trio of incidents involving an advertising sign placed within reach of competitors' limbs during a flagging movement. Adam Ondra (CZE), Sean McColl (CAN) and Romain Desgranges (FRA) were captured on video seemingly placing their feet on the sign and using it to advance higher. Judges ruled that Sean and Romain used the sign and scored both athletes down to the point before the foot placement, costing both climbers a place in the semis. Adam was not marked down, causing an uproar on social media. However, video footage later released from a different angle appeared to show Adam's foot hover very slightly above the sign in accordance with the judges' decision.

 

 

 

 

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Going into semifinals very soon here in @innsbruck2018 and getting psyched, but I am really sad that @seanmccol and Romain Desgranges did not make the semifinals which will not be as packed as it could be without these 2 legends. . It was clearly a huge mistake of the routesetter at the first place, putting the banner where it was clearly natural to place your foot. Hard to say how the judges should have reacted, but letting this happen is very sad. . Comparison videos/stills that went through the social media were all taken from the right hand side. I have really no clue what led judges to the conclusion that I was OK with that and Sean and Romain were not, but from this video - taken from the left hand side - it seems I am using the wall just barely above the banner. . Once you realize that I am only using the inner edge of my shoe - and my toe is comfortably above the banner - I do not think I am touching the banner. . Just an interesting note - in my case, I would have made the semifinals anyway, the result has no relevance for the further competiton - because of seperation of the field into two qualification groups, there is no countback in case of ties.

A post shared by Adam Ondra (@adam.ondra) on Sep 9, 2018 at 1:55am PDT

Matching the women's final, 10 men qualified following a 6-way tie for 5th place. A stopper section saw a cluster of scores around 29+, with Meichi Narasaki (JPN) and Alex Megos (GER) reaching past this bottleneck. Adam Ondra's early highpoint of 36+ was unbeaten until Jakob Schubert matched his performance to take provisional 1st place on countback to semis. Domen Skofič (SLO) was last to climb following a strong performance in the semis and climbed smoothly until the stopper move at 29+.

This was Jakob's second World Championship title following his win in Paris in 2012.

Bouldering, speed and paraclimbing qualifications and finals will take place this week, ahead of the Combined Finals on Sunday.

IFSC Climbing World Championships - Innsbruck (AUT) 2018

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