European Youth Boulder Cup in Laval (FRA)

In the third final problem – Pic by C. Loury

After a seesaw with our federation, if we can compete or not, Lena Herrmann and I finally got the chance to start at this year’s last European Youth Boulder Cup in Laval (FRA). Consequently the German Lead Cup in Würzburg wasn’t my last competition this year after all. The message that we are allowed to participate was surprising. Lena and I were driving on the high-way in direction to Frankenjura to spend some days on the rock. Particularly she was overjoyed to hear that. For her it was the last opportunity to perform well in her last year to compete in a youth category ever. That meant that we had to reorganize our plans a bit.

We spent two days on the rocks in Frankenjura and after moved on to Munich to finish our last competition preparations. On Friday before the competition was about to start we flew to Nantes to meet the small German team consisiting of Patricia Holzmann, Janka Meyer, Lena, coach Gunter Gäbel and me and to drive two hours northeast through the „Pays de la Loire“ to Laval. It is a small town with a pretty historic centre, plenty of bars and restaurants and several shopping streets.

On Saturday the competition started. This time the Youth A and Juniors categories had to contest the qualification round and the finals at the same day, on Sunday it was the Youth B’s turn. The multi-purpose hall of Laval offered enough place for a large crowd of spectators and a big tribune the competition wall was constructed on. As known before the French organizers managed this EYC very well anew, enabled through hard work of many volunteers. Besides the EYC an international Paraclimbing Boulder Cup took place, too.

The qualification round went relatively well for me. We had to work on rather powerful and dynamic-coordinative boulder problems with occasional balance sequences and high foot-holds. Like often my start into the competition was quite jolty. Only after three tries I was able to top out the easiest problem and was not concentrated enough because I was starting on wrong holds for example. This made me feeling somewhat insecure because other athletes already did five problems whilst I had finished only one or two. After the first half an hour I could pick up courage and started to finish more and more problems until I finally solved every problem. Therewith I qualified for finals as 4th place out of six which was held later in the evening.

At the finals umpteen spectators appeared. That’s why there was an amazing atmosphere and every single finalist was shouted and cheered up the wall. After a re-warm-up and a loose massage of my forearms I felt ready to give all I could. After the observation it was clear that again powerful and dynamic problems were set for us geared to an entertaining climbing-style. Except the first problem on a vertical wall. At the beginning a mantle and then a traverse to the right on slopy sideholds to the top. After I’d got the bonus hold it was hard for me to hold my body long enough on the wall to change over my feet. Probably a marginal change of my hands position could have changed this. Oh well, that was rather the only challenge for me in this final round. Boulder problem number two and three I easily flashed but that was not enough to take a place on the podium. In the end I had to settle with a 5th place to finish this year’s competition season. In the overall ranking I scratched over the podium placing 4th as my federation did not allow me to compete at the second EYC Boulder in L’Argentiere (FRA) on the 22nd and 23rd of July this year although I achieved nomination criteria. Nevertheless it was a nice close where I’ve met numerous good friends and which was fun for all of us. Now the rock is calling!

Cheers David