Mixed feelings for Speed

During the European Championship in Campitello, many lead climbers tried competing in Speed, in the international senior arena, for the first time. Michael Piccolruaz and Jan Hojer impressed with 7.98 and 8.43 respectively. Also Petra Klingler's 11.27 put her half way to Tokyo. Sean McColl has been the only top climber who has done Speed events and because of that, many have said he is the favorite to win the Olympic gold but in fact his best time ever is 8.83. Other than that Jakob Schubert got 10.23, Jernej Kruder 10.55, Domen Skofic 13.32 and Janja Garnbret 13.53. It should be mentioned that Stefano Ghisolfi did 7.98 when he was the Italian Champion but he will start training and competing in Speed later. Overall, it was really strange to watch the non-Speed climbers, beside the first three mentioned, as they disappeared from the camera screen which was following the often double as fast real Speed climber. Further more, the new false start rule including some falls made almost a quarter of the duel finals lose all the excitement. To put it mildly, it will be very strange for the non-climbing spectators to see that the potential Olympic gold medal will possibly climb 30 % or more slower than the world record at 5.48. Read also about the dumbest rule ever in the right column. 1. Iuliia Kaplina RUS - Marcin Dzienski POL 2. Anna Tsyganova RUS - Danyil Boldyrev UKR 3. Elena Remizova RUS - Stanislav Kokorin RUS Complete results Overall, Russia had five male in Top-9 and all Top-5 female were from Russia.