Innsbruck: Double Gold for Garnbret whilst Roberts podiums with a Bronze in Lead

• Tuesday 2nd July 2024

The Innsbruck World Cup event closed with Janja Garnbret securing Gold in both the Women’s Boulder and Lead events whilst Sohta Amagasa and Jakob Schubert get the Gold in Men’s Boulder and Lead respectively; GB’s Toby Roberts finishes strong with Bronze in Lead and 4^th in Boulder.

Whilst many of recent OQS-qualified athletes were taking a well-earned rest, several of the early qualifying Olympians were looking at the Boulder and Lead World Cup events at Innsbruck as the final ‘tester’ comp before the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

With less than a month to go before the start of Paris all the athletes are in the closing stages of their preparation. Amongst some of the biggest names and strongest contenders for medals at Paris competing at Innsbruck were Janja Garnbret, Jakob Schubert, Sorota Anraku, Tomoa Narasaki, Colin Duffy and GB’s own Toby Roberts. Some athletes, like Alex Megos for example, chose only to enter one of the Innsbruck rounds – Lead in his case. The Men’s defending Olympic Champion, Alberto Gines Lopez, was on the starting line-up for Innsbruck but pulling out as he was suffering from an injuy.

Men’s Boulder

Whilst qualification was a high scoring round the shock was that Jakob Schubert finished outside the cut and didn’t progress to the semi’s. The semi’s themselves were interesting for two reasons. Firstly, with no less than seven climbers in the top ten, the Japanese squad were clearly on a massive roll! Secondly, when boulder aces like Tomoa Narasaki don’t make the final but four of his team mates – including Sorota Anraku – do, then increasingly it looks as though the new generation are pulling away from the ‘old guard’. Anraku looked dominant with 4 tops, Roberts and Meichi Narasaki got two each and the rest of those qualifying for the finals finished with a single top.

The finals however saw a switch around and Sohta Amagasa took Gold thanks to his astonishing performance on M4 - a savage bloc involving a heinous move to a overhead undercut hold to finish! Whilst Meichi Narasaki took Silver and Bronze went to Sorato Anraku sadly, for GB interest, Toby Roberts was squeezed off the podium. In the wider context of Boulder competition’s it’s worth noting that this was not the first all-Japanese podium at a World Cup! Projecting forwards to Paris, of those qualified for the Games Sorato and Toby finished highest whilst Tomoa Narasaki and Colin Duffy finished down in 8^th and 14^th respectively.

Women’s Boulder

Women’s qualification round was also a high scoring round; those looking for surprises were undoubtedly surprised to see Janja Garnbret ‘down’ in joint 5^th! Garnbret however soon restored balance finishing the semi’s in top spot; she alone getting two tops whilst all the other finalist were restricted to a single top. Fellow Olympians, Jessica Pilz, Oriane Bertone, Oceania Mackenzie and Ai Mori finished in 2^nd, 7^th 12^th and 15^th respectively.

The finals saw an almost perfect separation amongst the climbers; unsurprisingly, Janja Garnbret topping all four blocs to secure (yet another) commanding victory. Fellow Slovenian, Jennifer Buckley and American Annie Sanders both topped three blocs to finish with Silver and Bronze respectively. In the context of Paris, Garnbret was clearly in a class of her own; the only other Olympian to make finals was Jessica Pilz - she finished in 5^th.

Men’s Lead

The much anticipated Men’s event got the Lead finals underway on Sunday evening. Although home-favourite Jakob Schubert had a three move margin at the top of the leader board after the semi’s, the rest of the pack – lead by Toby Roberts – were all close behind and looking very much in contention. Fellow Olympians Colin Duffy, Alex Megos and Tomoa Narasaki were in 5^th, 6^th  and 8^th and also qualified for the finals; surprisingly however, Sorato Anraku finished in 10^th ending his Innsbruck competition somewhat prematurely.

Alex Megos established an early highpoint falling off at 42+. When Toby Roberts – climbing second to last – fell off at 41+, one move short of Megos’ highpoint, it was all down to Jakob Schubert to decide the final placings. As usual, the lead specialist and high motivated Jakob Schubert posted a storming performance beating Alex Mego’s position to fall at 45 to secure the Gold; Alex Megos finished with Silver and Toby Roberts with Bronze. Olympians Colin Duffy and Tomoa Narasaki finished in 4^th and 8^th respectively. Interestingly, of the Lead medallists only Toby Roberts had done all the Boulder and Lead rounds and so would have been carrying more fatigue than both Schubert and Megos; viewed in this context, his Bronze medal finish should therefore be considered as very impressive indeed.

Women’s Lead

After the qualification and semi-finals Janja Garnbret and Ai Mori were very evenly balanced at the top of the Lead rankings. Fellow Olympians, Jessica Pilz, Chaehyun Seo and Yuetong Zhang finishing the semi’s in 3^rd, 5^th and 6^th respectively qualifying for the finals. Laura Rogora and Mia Krampl however finished in 15^th and 17^th respectively, well below the cut for the finals.

The Women’s final route had a dyno fairly low down between moves 22 and 23; only three of the finalists make it through that section. Chaehyun Seo was the first finalist to progress beyond this dyno; she climbed another 14 moves before falling off at 36. Ai Mori came out second to last and promptly topped the route; that therefore was Janja Garnbret’s goal, she’d need to match Mori’s top to take the win. It would be a brave person to bet against Garnbret but with ten seconds to go she was still staring at the last move and running out of time. Completing the move and clipping with literally a few seconds to spare it was a pretty close run thing; however, Garnbret took the win and her second Gold of the Innsbruck competition forcing Mori down into Silver position on countback and Seo into Bronze. Of Garnbret’s fellow Olympians, fourth placed Jessica Pilz was her nearest competitor and the only other Lead finalist to have competed in all six rounds of the Boulder and Lead competition at Innsbruck.

Olympic  Dreams

With the Olympics now so close, there’s very little time for those heading to Paris to do a great deal other than rest before doing their final preparations and then tapering down. However, those climbers who competed in both Boulder and Lead will be looking at their Innsbruck results and doing their fine-tuning accordingly.

Only eleven of the 40 Olympians competing in the Combined in Paris competed in both the Boulder and Lead events at Innsbruck. Looking at the results of those that did it’s interesting to calculate a ‘combined’ ranking based on simply adding their Boulder and Lead rankings together. Accepting that this is a very rudimentary analysis of their ‘combined’ ranking for these climbers only, it does however give an idea of which Olympians have the potential to do well in Paris. No doubt they will be doing the maths as well!

Finally, watch videos of the Boulder and Lead finals below…

Men’s Boulder Final

Women’s Boulder Final

Men and Women’s Lead Final