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.
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
Results
Video
Comments
It's on eurosport video on demand as well!
Thanks for not announcing the result in the title. Didn't get to see it live so it's nice not to know.
I thought overall this was a super well organized event with great lighting and camera angles and fantastic looking routes. Great shame about the women's final though coming down to timing of just 7 seconds - a crap way to decide the winner since lead climbing is not meant to be about speed. I think they should have had a super final - they could have put both Janja and Jesse on the men's route right before the men's final. It would have been fascinating to see how well they'd have done. Otherwise just call it what it was, a draw, and split the prize money.
Good to Molly TS climbing again. Great comeback from that gnarly injury. I thought she looked like one of the strongest in the semi final. She was one of only 3 climbers who did the footless section locked off, the others being Jesse and Janja.
I wondered what had happened to Romain Degranges. He and Sean must be absolutely gutted about that advertising banner, after months of training and build up to such a big event.
Excellent coverage of the Paraclimbing... No mention that we have several finalists and actually got podium finishes, but I forget that the standard, mediocre, results of our able bodied team is more important.
Read the title of the news item. It is about the Lead event.
My point is that there is no coverage what so ever. We have three golds, a silver and a bronze. This should be celebrated but there is no mention in this article, or since. They climbed on the same days, at the same event.
http://www.ifsc-climbing.org/index.php/world-competition/world-championships