Lead World Cup 2012: Sachi Amma and Mina Markovic win in Chamonix

Amma won the men's event, with Mont Blanc in the backdrop, convincing the crowd and beating his Catalan counterpart Ramon Julian Puigblanque by two holds, while the best after the Semifinal - Sean McColl from Canada - placed third a hold lower down. To everyone's surprise the hot favourite Jakob Schubert from Austria erroneously touched a bolt during the Semifinal and slipped to 11th, meaning that the winner of the Lead World Cup 2011 kicks this season off with an uphill battle.

The other favourite, Mina Markovic, didn't make any mistakes whatsoever and she produced an fairy-tale competition run: two tops in the qualification and a top in the Semifinal which was to prove a match winner seeing that in the final the Slovenian fell from the same hold as Jain Kim from Korea who fell short of the top in the semis. So Markovic first, Kim second and third the young Japanese hope Momoka Oda who confirmed last year's two third places. Seeing these outstanding results by Amma and Oda, evidently climbing is big in Japan, and how!

From an Italian point of view Stefano Gihisolfi placed 13th, followed by Francesco Vettorata 19th, Silvio Reffo 22nd and Marcello Bombardi 34th, while the only woman to represent Italy was Jenny Lavarda who finished 15th.


ResultsChamonix 12-13/07/2012
Lead Men
1 Sachi Amma JPN 43+
2 Ramón Julian Puigblanque ESP 41+
3 Sean McColl CAN 40+
4 Mikhail Chernikov RUS 34+
5 Magnus Midtboe NOR 25+
6 Thomas Ballet FRA 25+
7 Thomas Tauporn GER 20
8 Romain Desgranges FRA 8+

Lead Women
1 Mina Markovic SLO 42+
2 Jain Kim KOR 42+
3 Momoka Oda JPN 41
4 Hélène Janicot FRA 37+
5 Magdalena Röck AUT 37
6 Sasha DiGiulian USA 36+
7 Evgenia Malamid RUS 33+
8 Matilda Söderlund SWE 32+


Speed Men
1 Stanislav Kokorin RUS 6.4
2 Danylo Boldyrev UKR 9.04
3 Yaroslav Gontaryk UKR 6.4
4 Evgeny Astashkin RUS 7.45

Speed Women
1 Aleksandra Rudzinska POL 9.00
2 Alina Gaydamakina RUS 9.19
3 Natalia Titova RUS 9.40
4 Yuliya Levochkina RUS 10.64