Anna Stöhr and Dmitrii Sharafutdinov win Bouldering World Cup 2013

Toronto in Canada followed by Vail in the USA. These were the two stages of the North American "journey" of the 2013 Bouldering World Cup. A mini tour that has just ended and which, above all, highlighted Anna Stöhr's absolute dominion. Winning in both Toronto a fortnight ago and in Vail on Saturday night, the Austrian took home not only her sixth win in seven competitions this year, but also her fourth Bouldering World Cup title after those won in 2012, 2011 and 2008. Four years of rule, to which one must also add two second places (2009 and 2010) and two Bouldering World Champion titles ...

To tell the truth, even before the latest stage in Vail Stöhr had victory firmly in her pocket, but as is common knowledge, it's best not to trust numbers all too much so the 25-year-old played it safe and took gold in Colorado, too. Attentive analysis of the competition shows though that there wasn't an enormous safety margin and in a thrilling final the top three all sent the four problems in 9 tries, meaning that the judges had to resort to the number of attempts needed to reach the bonus zone. 7 for Stöhr, 9 for both Japan's Akiyo Noguchi and America's Alex Puccio, second and third respectively on the basis of countback to the semi-final. England's Shauna Coxsey finished an excellent fourth thanks to her three problems while Germany's Juliane Wurm settled for fifth with three problems and one less bonus zone. After having qualified third from the difficult semi-final America's Angela Payne lost her way in the finals and unfortunately failed to send a single problem.

If victory in the women's competition is all Austrian, the same cannot be said entirely for the men's event. Yes, in Toronto Kilian Fischhuber clinched victory ahead of Jorg Verhoeven and Jakob Schubert but, for the record, it needs saying that a fortnight ago the strong Russian Dmitrii Sharafutdinov was conspicuous by his absence. In Vail though he made sure he was conspicuous by his presence: he won be sending three problems in a mere five attempts. In comparison, Jorg Verhoeven, Sean McColl and Kilian Fischhuber sent just one, while local talent Paul Robinson failed to send even that! The only athlete capable of counteracting against Sharafutdinov's "fury" was - and this is probably no coincidence - his teammate Rustam Gelmanov whose second place shuffled the cards somewhat in the provisional ranking. In first place, if our maths are correct, lies triple Bouldering World Champion Dmitrii Sharafutdinov who has now won the overall World Cup one stage ahead of schedule. This means that during the last leg in 2013, scheduled to take place next August in Munich, Germany, Jacob Schubert, Guillaume Glairon Mondet, Jorg Verhoeven, Kilian Fischhuber, Rustam Gelmanov and Sean McColl will all battle it out for silver and gold... For all these athletes - except Anna Stöhr and Dmitrii Sharafutdinov - it's going to be a long summer... of waiting!


IFSC Climbing Worldcup (B) - Vail (USA) 7 - 8/06/2013
1 Dmitrii Sharafutdinov RUS 3t5 4b6
2 Rustam Gelmanov RUS 3t7 4b5
3 Jorg Verhoeven NED 1t1 3b3
4 Sean McColl CAN 1t1 3b8
5 Kilian Fischhuber AUT 1t2 4b6
6 Paul Robinson USA 0t 3b3

1 Anna Stöhr AUT 4t9 4b7
2 Akiyo Noguchi JPN 4t9 4b9
3 Alex Puccio USA 4t9 4b9
4 Shauna Coxsey GBR 3t4 4b5
5 Juliane Wurm GER 3t4 3b4
6 Angela Payne USA 0t 3b3


IFSC Climbing Worldcup (B) - Toronto (CAN) 02-03/06/2013
1 Kilian Fischhuber AUT 3t5 4b5
2 Jorg Verhoeven NED 3t5 3b5
3 Jakob Schubert AUT 2t2 3b4
4 Rei Sgimoto JPN 2t3 3b6
5 Rustam Gelmanov RUS 2t3 2b3
6 Sean McColl CAN 2t3 2b3

1 Anna Stöhr AUT 4t10 4b10
2 Akiyo Noguchi JPN 3t4 4b5
3 Alex Puccio USA 3t5 4b4
4 Shauna Coxsey GBR 3t10 3b6
5 Momoka Oda JPN 2t2 3b6
6 Katharina Saurwein AUT 1t4 2b3