World Championship 2007

World Chamionship 2007

The impressive top-30 walls

 Overall, the World Championship in Aviles, Spain, was a success. More competitors from more countries than ever, a cheering audience and an excellent live web camera that reached out to the entire climbing world. When we asked the Korean climber Sang-Won Son (#5 in boulder) what he thought about the competition he said: "good, good, good, good!". Route setting with Legrand and Percy were generally good. Especially the boulder problems were excellent. In addition, Top-30, the organiser of the event, supplied world class walls. The audience was particularly happy during the men´s lead final, which started with the number one entertainer of the event, 16 year old Eric Lopez (mini interview), who frequently communicated with the audience through gesticulations. Of course the main event was the competition between the two favourite spaniards, Ramonet and Patxi, where Ramonet became World Champion by grabbing the second last hold, one more hold than his opponent.

Nr 1 entertainer Eric Lopez after topping out the semi final Photo: Guillio Malfer (IFSC)

Brasilian climber lyfestyling by the Atlantic Ocean during the pause of the competition Photo: CJ Svensson

 The biggest sensation was the second place in bouldering of 17 year old Martin Stranik, #7 on the 8a route ranking. Martin is a prevalent route climber who entered the bouldering competition just to get some experience and be part of the overall championship (i.e. speed, lead, and boulder), which was a new good initiative from the IFSC. Jenny Lavarda (ITA) and Dimitri Sharafudinov (RUS) managed to grab this award. Interesting is that the top three male boulderers were competing in all events, showing that this concept holds. Anna Stohr, who looked shaky in the semi finals, easily flashed all the problems in the final to grab the trophy in female bouldering. This shows that her 2nd place in the European Championship for seniors in 2004 (she was 16 at the time) wasn´t an isolated event. The biggest favourite before the Championship, Angela Eiter, fulfilled everyone´s expectations when she won the superfinal against Muriel Sarkany in a superior fashion, actually beeting one of the male finalists. In a way this confirms our beliefs that Angela is among the top ten competition climbers in the world, including men. This is unique for climbing compared to most other sports. Noteworthy is that the French team, although totalling at second place after Russia, did their worst World Championship ever, not reaching the podium in any of the events.

 There were of course a few downsides to this competition. The worst flaw was the extremely poor safety, especially during the first days of the event. When a hold came off, the first competitor fell on a member of the crew who injured his foot. In the isolation, a russian female climber fell in between the matresses and severly injured her leg. In addition, the static belay caused irritation, especially among the smaller females. One guy even got a big bump in his head after a fall. Strange in a world Championship that the belayers don´t know that slack doesn´t create dynamic falls, you have to move towards the wall! For the journalists the situation was really weird since we were not let to take good pictures but confined to a few minor areas, especially duing the bouldering comp, and even here with restrictions to only five photographers at a time. In addition, journalist were not allowed into the isolation area, however, in some strage way team 8a.nu could be found exactly there.

 During the competition there were also many complaints on the competition format, both from climbers and audience. "This competition is shit" said Tomas Mrasek, #3 in lead, to the jury, rendering him a yellow card for bad behaviour. Read 8a´s suggestions to improve the format. As a last comment, we ask ourself why they didn´t arrange a party and a trip for the participants to show some of the climbing areas nearby. Isn´t this what climbing is all about; the scenery, climbing together and having fun. Imagine what this would have done for the community in terms of incresed communication between climbers from all over the world. We cite senor lifestyle himself, Dani Andrada: "Let´s leave this boring competition and go to the Atlantic coast to climb. Are you coming?".