Superior performances from Garnbret #1 and Grossman #2

Janja Garnbret won the Meiringen World Cup ahead of Natalia Grossman and they were both leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the field. Overall, Janja did all 13 boulders and in the final, she only needed five attempts. Natalia managed ten boulders overall out of which three in the final. Andrea Kümin, #6 in the WCh last year, got the bronze pleasing the home crowd, doing one boulder as also Oriane Bertone #4 did. Noteworthy is that they did only six boulders overall as also #5 Futaba Ito and Stasa Gejo #6 did. Complete results (c) Jan Virt/IFSC

From one point of view, the boulders seemed to be a bit too hard in the last two rounds at the same time, Janja probably could have done just as many even if they had been a bit harder. Prior to Meiringen, Janja had been in Oliana projecting the endurance monster La Dura Dura 9b+.

From the IFSC newsletter, “Today’s win was a privilege. It means a lot to me because it’s not obvious that you will win every competition – each competition is a story in itself. Just because you won everything last year doesn’t mean that you can next year, so every win means a lot to me. That’s why I was so emotional!” said Garnbret.

“I’ve decided to skip the [rest of the] Boulder season this year. The Olympics last year were a pretty hard take on physical and mental preparation, so I feel that I need a little time off from comps and this year is the perfect year to do that. I already have [the Olympic Games in] Paris in mind!” she added.