In the first IFSC European Youth Cup (EYC) of 2013, held at the hugely impressive Edinburgh International Climbing Arena (EICA) Ratho over the weekend of 8 and 9 June, GB Team member William Bosi got on the podium with an extremely impressive second place against really strong opposition.

206 young people from 19 European countries converged on EICA Ratho, near Edinburgh. It was noticable that some countries sent large and very strong teams. France and Austria, for instance. As a result the standards were very high and competition, although friendly was also hard fought.

The event involved male and female categories in both Speed and Lead climbing for Junior, Youth A and Youth B categories.

The categories themselves are the international IFSC categories and are based on year of birth. Each category covers a two year span. They are as follows:

Juniors: born in 1994/1995

Youth A: born in 1996/1997

Youth B: born in 1998/1999

Day 1

Day one, Saturday, was qualifiers. The first 10 in each category went through to the finals.

GB was represented by a strong team who were really psyched.

The morning was given over to Lead Climbing. All competitors had two routes to attempt and things were close. In several cases getting just one hold higher made the difference between qualifying or not. There were a number of GB Team members who narrowly missed qualifying.

Peter Dawson, for instance, in Male Youth B category, clmbed really well but came 11th and so just missed getting through as did team mate Jim Pope (14th) with Angus Davidson 31st. However, William Bosi came first in the category and emphatically qualified for the final.

A similar thing hapened in the Female Junior Category where all our team narrowly missed qualifying: Charlotte Garden was 12th, Sarah Pashley 15th and Jennifer Wood 16th.

In the Youth A category, our sole female GB representative, Molly Thompson-Smith, pulled off a strong and determined 8th to qualify.

In the female Youth B category another lone GB competitor, Rebecca Kinghorn, notched up a very respectable 26th.

In the male Youth A category, Buster Martin qualified for his first EYC final in 9th place but his team mates Connor Byrne (19) and Alex Waterhouse (21) just missed out.

All in all a really good team performance and result for our Junior GB Lead Climbing Team.

In the afternoon it was the turn of the speed climbers. It's fair to say that in the past this has not been our best event. But, for the first time ever, three GB competitors qualified for the Speed Climbing finals. Peter Dawson in Male Youth B, Alexander Bosi in Male Youth A; and Orrin Coley in the Male Juniors category.



Day 2

Day two started at 9am on Sunday with the Lead Climbing finals. Each competitor climbed one route each; and male & female finalists climbed at the same time on parallel routes - which made for a great spectacle.

First up was the Youth B category. William Bosi (GB) qualified in first place. In the final he climbed strongly and confidently but unfortunately came off lower than Stefano Carnati (ITA) to podium in 2nd place. A great result that shows William has great promise. Although, interestingly, William himself thought he could have gone higher if he hadn't made a small mistake.

In the Youth A category we had two GB climbers in the final: Buster Martin in the male category and Molly Thompson-Smith in the female category. Both gave everything. Molly finished 5th and Buster 8th.Two pleasing results. In the female Youth B category 3 people topped the final climb and so the top three places were decided on time. The fastest person, Julia Chanourdie (FRA), taking first place and so on.

There was no GB interest in the Junior Lead finals.

However, for the very first time, there was in the Speeding Climbing finals as we had 3 GB qualifiers. In his first run Orrin Coley, in Male Juniors, beat his competitor with a Personal Best time of 9.98 seconds. He eventually finished in 4th place. Peter Dawson, in Male Youth B, also did very well and came 4th in his first final. Alex Bosi finished a very creditable 7th in the Male Youth A category.

Results

Lead

Female Youth B Lead

Female Youth A Lead

Female Junior Lead

Male Youth B Lead

Male Youth A Lead

Male Junior Lead

Speed

Male Youth B Speed

Male Youth A Speed

Male Juniors Speed

Female Youth B Speed

Female Youth A Speed

Female Juniors Speed

The Junior British Leading Team is supported by Sherpa Adventure Gear and NICAS.

« Back