Ice Climbing World Cup 2006, Saas Fee results

Ines Papert from Germany and Markus Bendler from Austria have won the third stage of the Ice Climbing World Cup 2006, held in Saas Fee, Switzerland, last weekend. Jenny Lavarda and Petra Muller, Simon Wandler and Jack Müller placed second and third.

PlanetMountain.com

February 2006

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Ines Papert from Germany and Markus Bendler from Austria have won the third stage of the Ice Climbing World Cup 2006, held in Saas Fee, Switzerland, last weekend. Papert beat Jenny Lavarda (2nd) and Petra Muller (3rd) due to her better Semifinal result.

Whilst the German athlete comfortably leads the provisional results (with three straight wins), the provisional male results are headed by Simon Wandler from Switzerland, second here in Saas Fee, winner at Spicak and fourth in Daone. Wandler beat his teammate Jack MÃ¼ller, 3rd in Saas Fee, whilst the defending World Champion Harald Berger placed fifth.

The World Cup circuit now travels east to Busteni, Romania, for the fourth and penultimate stage scheduled for 10-11/02/2006.

Published below is a brief competition report by Berger himself:

Saas Fee 2006 by Harald Berger
After a quite disappointing World Cup event in Spicak (Czech Republic) all competitors were psyched for maybe the most professional ice climbing competition in Saas Fee.

Two hard open routes made sure that only the best 18 climbers could qualify for the Semifinals. On route 1 only Simon Wandeler reached the top. All the others either ran out of time or were stopped by some tricky dry tooling moves.

The semifinal was very tricky once again and the time limit was too short for all of us to finish the route. But in my opinion it is always better to have hard routes than to have too many tops and a stupid time decision. Congratulations though to the route setters, because they managed to invent some very interesting technical and tricky moves, which finally proved to be an equal challenge for our brain and our biceps.

Meanwhile the girls finished their finals up a more than 30 meter route. Ines, Petra and Jenny made it up to the last third, but couldn't do the move from the icicle to the dry tooling section. As a result of the Semifinals Ines won just ahead of Petra and Jenny. 4th place went to my girlfriend Kirsten, who was happy about her effort.

Unfortunately I was still suffering from having spent too many hours in the isolation tent (at –15Â°C) in Spicak, but thankfully I still qualified for the final and I was nevertheless psyched for the final route (and the party afterwards).

Watching the route at the preview everything became clear: if I could do the 2 very tricky dry tooling moves at the first roof then I would be able to climb very high, even if I still didn't feel 100%. But I think most of the other climbers felt the same as me.

Surprisingly the tricky holds dropped strong climbers such as Samuel, Simon A., Evgeny, Herbert and unluckily also myself. Only Jack, Simon W. and Markus were able to climb further, but no one finished the route. Normally Markus is very nervous at comps so I'm very happy for his first place, because he is not only a good friend but also one of the strongest climbers I know.

All in all Saas Fee was once again a perfectly organised event that should be seen as a standard for a future ice climbing event. Good job guys!

UIAA ICE CLIMBING WORLD CUP 2006
3rd stage Saas Fee, Switzerland 2-4/02/2006

men
1. Bendler Markus (Aus)
2. Wandeler Simon (Swi)
3. MÃ¼ller Jack (Swi)
4. Anthamatten Samuel (Swi)
5. Berger Hari (Aus)
6. Anthamatten Simon (Swi)
7. Kryvosheytsev Evgeny (Ukr)
8. Klammer Herbert (Ita)

women
1. Papert Ines (Ger)
2. Lavarda Jenny (Ita)
3. MÃ¼ller Petra (Swi)
4. Buchmann Kirsten (Ger)
5. Eyer Alexandra (Swi)
6. Koulikova Natalia (Rus)
7. Torretta Anna (Ita)
8. Stobnikova Xenia (Rus)