sawyl | Chamonix Lead World Cup (Reply)

I've been watching the lead climbing from Chamonix over the last couple of days — like everyone, I was a bit thrown by the mid-week schedule — and the results have been interesting. The general feeling seems to be that the qualifier routes were a bit odd, with lots of people falling at the same point. Some very strong climbers failed to make it through in the men's competition — I really feel for Sebastian Hallenke, who was distraught after slipping off a very chalky sloper fairly low down — and in the women's comp, only Janja Gambret topped the route. The men's final started slightly oddly, with the first climber out topping the route, followed by three more tops, with the competitors differentiated on time — I think they were drawn on count back to previous rounds. Likewise the women's route saw three tops, with Anak Verhoeven saying that she felt the route wasn't really hard enough to challenge the athletes — which, given her amazing performance in the European Championships, isn't much of a surprise...