The IFSC World Cup Series 2024 has moved to Wujiang, China, just around the corner from Keqiao. With the change in venue, the discipline has also changed, with more focus on lead and speed.
First of all, there are lead qualifications.
In the men's competition, many climbers achieved high rankings, and four climbers shared first place in the overall rankings. Britain's Toby Roberts, America's Colin Duffy and Japan's pair of Taisei Honma and Sorato Anraku all topped both routes and advanced to the semi-finals of the competition.
South Korea's Lee Do-hyun was the only other climber to top the climb, finishing in fifth place. Japan will have 11 representatives in 26 teams, with Boulder World Cup Kebashi winner Chia Narasaki joining teammates Anraku and Honma.
Another Boulder World Cup medalist from Keqiao, Belgium's Hannes van Duysen, will also advance to the semi-finals, where he will be joined by defending Lead World Cup winners Sacha Lehmann (Switzerland) and Luka Potkar (Slovenia).
Australian future Olympian Campbell Harrison enjoys start to Olympic year, gets through 24 yearsth. Mr Harrison said: “It’s my third consecutive Reed World Cup semi-final appearance and I’ve only been to the semi-finals five times in total so I’m pretty excited. I'm glad I was able to maintain my full strength and have a decent round. So far the season has started well so it's a good sign for Paris.”
Similar to the men's rankings, the women's rankings were also lined up with double tops and familiar names. No one knows the top of the leaderboard better than Janja Garnbret. With 2 tops, the Slovenians will advance to the semi-finals again.
This result is matched by Italy's Laura Rogola and local favorite Luo Zhilu. She will be hoping her crowd will give her a little more of a boost heading into her competition.
The other two athletes who took the lead on this route were France's Manon Hilly, who passed in fourth place, and South Korea's Seo Chae-hyun, who passed in fifth place.
Hiley said: “The route was very good and very powerful. I think it's my style to just give 100%. I like this wall because it sticks out so much, and the route setter adjusts the route well.'' It made the climb very easy.”
There is growing interest from the home team in the semi-finals against Zhang Yuetong, who has already qualified for the 2024 Paris Games and made it through the qualifying rounds in 2011.th.
Mr. Zhang said: “It felt better than I expected. I haven't done much lead training, so I think the way I climbed it was a little different, but I'm happy that I climbed it well.'' The second route was my strong point, so I did well. I climbed. I haven't trained the lead very much so I don't have much stamina.
“I was a little nervous before the competition because everyone knows I have a ticket to the Olympics. So maybe they were expecting me to be really strong. Boulder World Even in the Cup, people told me they were looking forward to me climbing the lead, but I hadn't trained that much and I didn't want to disappoint them.”
About her 100 years oldth South Korea's Kim Jae-in, who has risen to fourth place in women's history in World Cup appearances, will join teammates Seo and Cho Ga-young, who have advanced to the next round of 26.th spot.
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