Manuel CORNU Wins First Gold Medal

Without the competition of the 2 previous gold medalists in the Finals (ONDRA was sick and KRUDER failed to qualify for the semis), the outcome was entirely uncertain. Finishing at the top was the French Climber Manuel CORNU who took this opportunity to climb onto the podium for the first time in an IFSC World Cup, winning his first gold medal.

With time enough for only one more attempt to reach the zone on M3, Tomoa NARASAKI (JPN) succeeded winning his second silver medal this year. Anze PEHARC (SLO) finished with a personal best this season and a place on the podium with a bronze medal. With only 3 tops, Sascha LEHMANN (SUI), Aleksey RUBTSOV (RUS) and Kokoro FUJII (JPN) didn’t reach the podium but ranked honorably at 4, 5 and 6 respectively.

With very challenging and impressive boulders, the women’s finals had some of the most difficult problems that we have seen this year. Unfortunately for Katja KADIC (SLO), all four problems were too hard for her to be topped. The young Japanese Futaba ITO (JPN) achieved to top the first boulder as Petra KLINGLER (SUI) topped the third one. Unfortunately with only 2 Zones, the Japanese ranked 5th while the Swiss climber finished at the foot of the podium with a 4th place finish. The Austrian climbing machine, Jessica PILZ, demonstrated that after winning everything in LEAD, she is ready for BOULDERING! With 3 Tops she jumped, for the first time, onto a boulder podium with the bronze medal. For the Gold medal, the very impressive battle took place between the Japanese Akiyo NOGUSHI and the Slovenian Janja GARNBRET. After both flashed the first boulder, Akiyo took the lead of the competition with just one less attempt to reach W2 zone than Janja. But Janja wasn’t finished and regained the lead with a flash on M3 and only needed two attempts to solve the forth problem, whereas Akiyo needed 2 attempts for W3 and 5 for the last boulder leaving her with the silver medal.

With 3 consecutive Gold Medals this season, we can begin to ask ourselves if anyone will be able to stop Janja GARNBRET, who has already begun to take a strong lead in the 2019 Overall Rankings.

Visit the official event page for the full results and highlights from Chongqing.