The women’s Speed qualification continued where Kraków left off with the top three places taken by the medal winners in Poland last week.
In a little mix up of the positions, qualification in Chamonix saw Poland’s Aleksandra Miroslaw in top spot with Indonesia’s Desak Dewi fresh off a first-ever World Cup gold in second and USA’s Emma Hunt in third. The best time of the day was 6.38s from world record holder Miroslaw.
One climber doing things a little different from Kraków is Hunt’s teammate Isis Rothfork: “I’m very happy with my qualification because Kraków was bad. I was kind of stressed going into this comp and I changed my goals a little bit. I wanted the emphasis on good, quality runs over just being fast and I was able to do well by my standards.”
Lowering her personal best time to 7.01s to place in 11th overall, Rothfork isolated her thoughts ahead of the competition: “I changed how I was thinking, not how I was climbing.
“I had some good training before this in Switzerland, and it’s always nice to have good times in training going into a comp but with Speed you can have good times and a bad comp, so I think my mental switch was more key than anything else.”
With a final round to now look forward to, Rothfork has some new goals and targets to hit: “I’ll just try and take it one step at a time. I’ve never won a race in finals so to PB in the competition and win a race would be nice.”
The Chamonix qualification was the fastest ever with China’s Zhang Shaoqin time of 7.08s the cut off in 16thplace, and Italy’s Beatrice Colli was maybe caught a little off guard by the times: “I was surprised with 7.03 I was 14th, it’s crazy, everyone is going so fast now.”
Making it through, Colli gave her thoughts on her round: “I’m happy because Chamonix is always the best place to compete and before qualification, I was feeling great and wanted to do my best. I couldn’t do my best though because I had bad reaction time as I was thinking too much about a false start.”
While the final is dominated by Poland, Indonesia, USA and China, the Chamonix crowd will have a home nation climber to cheer for as Olympian Capucine Viglione made it through in 12th place.
Women’s finals competitors
1 Aleksandra MIROSLAW (POL) 6.38
2 Desak MADE RITA KUSUMA DEWI (INA) 6.42
3 Emma HUNT (USA) 6.54
4 ZHOU Yafei (CHN) 6.54
5 QIN Yumei (CHN) 6.55
6 JEONG Jimin (KOR) 6.59
7 Natalia KALUCKA (POL) 6.60
8 Aleksandra KALUCKA (POL) 6.80
9 ZHANG Mengli (CHN) 6.89
10 Rajiah SALLSABILLAH (INA) 6.94
11 Isis ROTHFORK (USA) 7.01
12 Capucine VIGLIONE (FRA) 7.01
13 Giulia RANDI (ITA) 7.03
14 Beatrice COLLI (ITA) 7.03
15 Leslie Adriana ROMERO PÉREZ (ESP) 7.07
16 ZHANG Shaoqin (CHN) 7.08
Full women’s qualification Speed results here
News and updates about the event will be available on the IFSC website and on the Federation’s digital channels: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube, and exclusively for the Chinese audience, Douyin, Weibo, and Xiaohongshu.