European Youth Champs Imst 2013

Myself and Alex - check that view! 

Two weekends ago, a large team from GB went to the European Youth Championships held in Imst, Austria. We went out 2 days before the comp - one of which was used for relaxing (swimming and the alpine coaster) and the other was for the speed comp. We had 3 speed climbers with us so we watched their runs on the friday. Well done to Alexander (21st), Orrin (19th) and Ian (14th) in their tough categories. Special congratulations to Orrin Coley who got  a personal best and sub 10 seconds time! Effort!

Route 1

After a wet opening ceremony it was finally time for the lead comp. I was up 10th so I headed up to the wall pretty early. Our route had bad and slopey holds with a few positive smaller holds here and there. Unfortunately, the girls on my route were taking less time than I thought they would so my warm up was rushed. I headed down to the wall not feeling confident but surprisingly I got pretty high up on the route and ended up in joint 7th with a few others. It was only 10am by the time I had finished my route so myself and the other climbers who had finished early went back to the hotel so we could stay out of the sun and keep cool. It was 45 degrees!!!

Throwing some shapes!

After a couple hours, we went back to the wall to see the demos. I was out around 33rd so I had awhile to wait. I warmed up better this time and felt ready when I went down... however, I didn't realise there was a cleaning break a few before me so this extended my waiting time. I didn't do so well on this route and got pumped really quickly. I ended up joint 14th on this route. My results put me in joint 12th overall. I was disappointed with my results and climbing but it motivated me to train 10x harder when I got home.

Although I didn't get the result I wanted in Imst it showed me that my endurance was letting me down and that I needed to train a lot harder in the gap between Imst and the upcoming World Youth Championships in Canada next week. I'm psyched for some hard training and hopefully a good result in Canada!

Well done to Jim Pope and William Bosi who both made the finals in an incredibly strong category! The
boys' good results are looking promising for the Worlds!

(Massive thanks to Alexander Bosi and Orrin for the photos!)