Making Speed Climbing history 🇰🇼 🇹🇭 ¦ Seoul 2024

Today it's the turn of the speed climbers to compete. Right now they're doing some training and later on it's the finals and we'll be showing you all of those highlights. But first of all it's time to do a little bit of a grid walk and we've got some retirees. Team Indonesia especially, some legends are saying goodbye to the sport. Nural, you are leaving the competition scene so tell me what's next for you? I don't really know but I have a plan for coaching I think. I'm still with my team, the Indonesia team, but now I'm not an athlete but I think I need to coach them. Are there young Indonesian climbers that you see that are coming? Tell me a bit about them. I really know about Indonesian younger. They will grow up I think so I can't wait to see them for the next world championship and then get a gold medal in the Olympics. Well look, it's really sad that you're going. You will be missed but good luck today on that last competition. I hope you get in the finals. Yeah, good luck. Thank you. We love it when we see new athletes and new federations come onto the IFSC circuit. So with that in mind, tell us who you are and who you climb for. Hello, my name is Nasser Bourjib and I climb for my beloved country Kuwait. Now not only is this your first ever world cup but this is the first ever athlete Kuwait has ever had. So tell me about your journey to get here. It is crazy to me that I am the first one and I'm very honored to take the first step. My history with climbing, I climbed at the end of 2019, beginning of 2020 as bouldering but I was always fascinated with speed climbing and I always wanted to speed climb. There was like a regional Arab comp that was held in Jordan and I participated in it. It was lead climbing and I did really well and the national team decided to take me in and they sent me to the Asian Games and the Asian Continental in Riyadh last year and that is the first time I've been on a speed wall and I just immediately fell in love. Then I contacted Albert Oak, he's my coach, also one of the best people I've ever met and he has helped me with speed climbing. So I trained with him, he invited me to Salt Lake and also Sam Watson helped me a lot and he hosted me as well and they taught me how to speed climb and in two weeks I've been running like very early sixes and hopefully I would get a sub-six this comp. Wow that is incredible. I know there's not many training facilities in Kuwait so realistically getting into an IFSC speed finals is pretty difficult. I presume that's not your goal here but what are your aims for this competition and the future? For this competition it's more of my taking like my first step and showing what we got even with no facilities we can still make it on the big stage. I would like to see what my mistakes learn from this being on the big stage talking to all these athletes we have like the Olympians as well so learn from them, take videos, have fun, that is like very important to me and like have some good memories as well. Fantastic, well I can't wait to watch you climb in the qualifying which is very soon so I'm gonna let you get back to it. Best of luck. Thank you so much. I'm here with Agnese, now you are fairly new to the scene, you're 18 years old, how many world cups have you done? I've done five world cups, two last year and three this year. Tell me a bit about this competition because it's a new venue, what's the wall like? The wall is perfect, also the holes are really great and yeah I think it's very good. Now it's hot today, usually boulder and lead athletes hate the heat, you guys don't seem to mind as much, why is that? I don't really care about the heat or warm or cool, I just enjoy the competition wherever. Well best of luck, qualification to come, fingers crossed. Thank you so much. So we're backstage and there's such an intensity in the atmosphere here, the athletes are warming up on the wall, some are sitting and chilling but you can just see a little bit of tension as they get ready, it's such an explosive sport and you can feel that energy in the room, it's cool to see. Sam we talked to your dad just now, he's out in the audience screaming as usual, you've got the tattoo. Yes, so I got this tattoo about two weeks ago, that's why it's all peeling, healing up but you know I'm super psyched, so got it in colour, then 2024 below it, so I can do 2028, 2032 and etc below it, so I think it's a really good design, I've known it for like a year than what I wanted to do. I absolutely love it man, you've become such a massive star since the Olympics, I've heard a rumour you want to win the overall for this don't you, that's why you're here. I do want to win the overall, that's my main goal, I think being world number one overall and then being the World Cup Series champion is a major thing for a sport like this and so getting everyone psyched on that and then next year as well, it'll be so fun to compete at these events and trying to do well at every event and then I've podiumed every event so far so I don't want to lose that streak, so we'll see how it goes. Alright man, best of luck. Aspart, this is your last competition, you're retiring right? Yes, this is my last competition, I'm so happy because this sport has very good development in the world, yeah I hope it's good for all athletes. Okay well look, you're going to be so missed, you've always been such an amazing part of Team Indonesia, are you going to win a medal today in your last comp? Yeah, I hope, I hope, thank you. Good luck mate. Thank you. Let's have a look at the qualification results, as a large field was whittled down to just 16 men and 16 women. For the women, Nurul Iqbal will climb again in her last finals, what a way to finish. Korea has three athletes through for the crowd to get behind, Hanarum Song, Jimin Hwang and silver medalist from Briansom, Jimin Jong. Perhaps her biggest rival will be China's Li who beat her to gold last time round in Briansom. For the men, Aspart Aspart's comp career continues to finals and he's with teammates Colonel Katervin, Rahajita Nomasama and winner from the last comp, Bedrick Leonardo. Keep an eye out on current world record holder Samuel Watson who cruised into finals. A shout out to Afriat Limpanichpak De, it's his and his country's debut on the World Cup stage and he's made the finals. Spanish legend Eric Neuer is also through and we caught up with him to find out about a special upcoming competition. So Eric, lovely to see you again but I don't want to talk about you, I want to talk about Madrid because there's a special event that you're helping organise in Madrid, tell me about it. Yeah, well that's crazy, I'm super happy about it and we're having for the four lane format speed competition and we are doing it in Madrid, in the capital of my country, the country I represent, so I'm very excited, I just can't wait. Yeah, right, well tell me more about this format because we're used to two lanes in speed, four lanes, how on earth does that work? Yeah, well that's the idea, let's try. Basically it's instead of two lanes, putting two lanes more so the spectators can see more climbers at the same time and I hope that the rounds go faster as well and I think for the viewers it's going to be amazing and it's four lanes format, more like athletics and I think it's a very interesting format to try, maybe that can lead us to relays or so many ideas that I think this is a huge step for our discipline and yeah, looking forward to it. Well I'm rubbish at maths but to me that's double the excitement with four lanes so that's going to be good and tell me about the athletes feedback, are they psyched for it? They are super psyched, actually many, many countries are reaching out, they want to come and that's crazy because we didn't know what to expect and then suddenly we got all the craziest, fastest competitors coming to Madrid so we expect China to be there, Kazakhstan, we expect the USA to be there, Indonesia, everyone is going to be there so I think the hype is, the psyched is high, yeah. Well final thing then, when is this? When can we watch it? We're meeting you there from 18th to 20th October. Fantastic, I cannot wait Eric, awesome. It's going to be amazing, yeah. Speed finals time and it was a dramatic one with slips, falls and tight races along the way to the small final and big final. Let's start off with the small final for the women where Chinese teammates faced off. Shenggen Wang was up against Li Zhuangdeng from the bronze. Li Zhuangdeng off to a good start but she is now a little behind. 6.802 versus 6.901. Big final now and Indonesia's Rajia Salsabilia was racing China's Yifei Zhao in her first ever last final race. Yifei is a bit ahead but we'll see if, oh okay, and Yifei might get close with a 6.781 and she will win the World Cup. On to the men and it was the World Champion Matteo Zalone from Italy against Indonesia's Kermil Katabin. So here we go, gold medal time and two more speed demons. China's Jingxuan Wang races Kazakhstan's Amir Maimuratov. And Jingxuan will take his first World Cup victory. 6.2 seconds will bring it home for him and that is his first win. So that's the end of the 2024 season for speed. Now we turn our attention to the lead competition in this incredible triple header.