The IFSC Climbing World Cup in Chamonix, France hosted competitors from around the world at this year’s fifth Speed World Cup and fourth Lead World Cup competition. Here’s what some of the top-performing athletes had to say following each round.
LEAD QUALIFICATIONS
Alex Megos of Germany
“For now qualification is okay. I think it’s really good this time that you don’t have to top both routes in Chamonix to be through to semis.
“The routes, I mean I’ve only climbed one so far, but it’s really good. Good route setting so far.”
Lucija Tarkus of Slovenia
“I was pretty nervous before the start because it was my first Lead competition of the year, and I focussed more on Boulder for the first part of the season, so I wasn’t fully confident with my Lead performance.
“I made a bit of a stupid mistake on the first one and I knew I have to climb really high on the second route, and I’m really happy that I did it I feel it.”
SPEED QUALIFICATIONS
Amir Maimuratov of Kazakhstan
“Chamonix is a magic place for me, I had my very first final here. This place has very fresh air, a great atmosphere and everyone seems to be going very fast as they are very hungry after Kraków.
“Having a World Cup so quickly after the last one, there are a lot of people that are angry because they lost and want to show their best, so it made it a fast round.”
Gilles Meili of Switzerland
“It feels only half good because on the 5.3 qualification run my Tomoa skip was very bad, so the first half of the route was very slow for me, but then I managed to push out in the second half of the route.”
“I’ll do the World Champs, and if the time to make finals is similar to [the Chamonix times] my goal would be to make finals. If I get a clean run I can do a 5.1 and there is still a lot of time to go until the event so I think I can only get faster.”
Isis Rothfork of USA
“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. 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.”
“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.”
Beatrice Colli of Italy
“I was surprised with 7.03 I was 14th, it’s crazy, everyone is going so fast now.”
“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.”