Para Climbing in finals focus ¦ Innsbruck 2024

Hello and welcome to the iconic venue here at the Kletter Centrum Gym in Innsbruck. It's World Cup time and time for the Climbing Club, the show where we bring you highlights, behind-the-scenes footage, interviews and more. Now, before we get cracking with the para-climbing, we're always fascinated by how our athletes actually made it to the event. And Sebastian Deppke, well, he took a hand bike solar-powered machine across Europe. Here's his story. My name is Sebastian Deppke. I'm from Germany, competing in the RP1 sport class here in Innsbruck. The solar hand bike now needed to be tested on bigger distances, so I decided to go here to Innsbruck to the Para-Climbing World Cup to see if I can cover such big distances of 1,000 kilometers. It worked out. I arrived here after 1,000 kilometers. I did it in seven days and it was an amazing trip. I had a few technical issues here and there, but after all, that didn't stop me for too long. So I'm really happy that I'm here. And the first medal was already getting here. And now we're here for climbing. I have ankylosing spondylitis. That's a rheumatic disease which led, in my case, to a fused spine and hips. That means that I have just my arms with also a limited range of movement in my shoulders, my knees and my ankles for climbing. And I do pure para-climbing in order to compensate my lack of flexibility. I started climbing in 1998. So that's now more than 26 years of climbing. And I did all different sorts of climbing from sport climbing, multi-page. I also did some big wall, artificial climbing. I bolted new routes. I made first ascents. And now the next chapter in my climbing career is artificial walls and competition climbing. That journey took over seven days and 212 kilometers. He's got a video coming soon in his YouTube channel, so keep an eye out for that. Now we're almost time to get underway for the finals. But before we do, I've managed to find Maragda, who is insanely busy as always. You've been setting all week for the para-athletes. How's the week been? Oh, it was great. It was great. It was nice because this term we were just alone in that wall. So we were just like focused a lot of material, a lot of time. It was nice also to share with a wilder team, but it was great. Tell me the differences because you set for able-bodied climbers and then you come and set for impaired climbers. What's the challenges for setting for impaired athletes? The most difficult thing is when we put a lot of different disabilities in one route. That's the tricky stuff. Like you have to think for one disability, has to work for another disability. So I think when we're getting experience, you know which things can work at the same route for everyone. So yeah, I think the most difficult thing is one route has to work for everyone. That means time, that means a lot of experience. And actually with a good team, I think we can push and we can put like a good result. But this is just time and think about it a lot of time. Something that the athletes were saying after the qualifying round is that the routes were hard. Is it important that you're challenging them and pushing them to different levels? Yeah, I think last year after the world championship, we decided like last year it was like our goal. Like try to give to the athletes the same quality, the same steady, the same different moves as you can see in able-bodied World Cups like for another competitions. So I think this year it was continue with that goal, the same. And here we do our step more. Yeah, we decided to try to give like another experience, another style that they have to push, they have to make decisions while they are climbing. So yeah, the result was a bit hard. They were super happy to fight and to make really hard and fly buzzing all around us here. We're getting attacked. That's right. So yeah, like we are happy. It was hard, but the people are super excited for this new stuff. And this is going to be like that. I think like we are so surprised that people give us a good feedback. Well, the music is ramping up in the background, which means it's almost go time. We get to see your routes in action. So let's jump into the highlights and find out who took those gold medals. Finals time in Innsbruck, the event that everyone on the para calendar wants to win, and over 200 athletes attempted to qualify. We start with women's RP3, where USA's Nat Borrell took gold in a strong climb. The campus queen Pavitra van der Hoeven won RP1, only the traverse section holding her back, an impressive win. Team India saw Manikandan Kumar top the route in RP2, and he finished things off with a wild celebration. Winning RP1 was Kim Rishag, who reached the stalactite feature before falling. Italy took home a gold in women's RP2, Chiara Covina being careful on her feet on the way to a high point. Men's RP3 and Japan's Tadashi Takano climbed into the final sequence and almost topped the route, a last huge jump sending him down. Nadia Bricci claimed gold in women's B1 and climbed at the same time as Japan's Sho Aita in men's B1. Nadia falling on the stalactite and Sho just before the top. Women's B2 gold went to Linda Le Bon, who showed fantastic endurance to Winning his category again was Razavan Nerdu. B2 belongs to him. He worked his way upwards towards the headwall before falling in another impressive climb. Almost topping out his climb in men's B3 was Cosmin Floren. Cosmin is another who is a regular medalist and he's got another for his collection. USA had Lynn Poston on the top spot of the podium and she looked confident throughout, never getting flustered, climbing through the overhang to almost finish her route. Winning yet another gold in Innsbruck was Kevin Bartek, one of his favourite places to climb. Nothing was going to stop him tonight as he topped out the route in style in men's AU2. Another athlete who's used to winning is Céline Piret, climbing in women's AU2. She worked hard for her win though, getting to the final sequence on the headwall in another great effort. Taking the win in women's AU3 was Rosaline Schauper, who climbed high on a hard route that saw lots of athletes falling early. Dominic Geisser is a veteran of the circuit and he won yet again here in Innsbruck. It never looked like he was going to fall and it was impressive taking gold in AU3. Women's AL2 gold went to Lucie Jarige, who made quick work of the bottom half of the route, getting through to the last hard shoulder moves on her way towards the top. Ethan Ziltz got the last medal from a strong USA team. He was precise with his movements, never rushed and was in cruise control, reaching a final giant textured blue volume. We end with men's AL1 and hometown hero Angelina Zela powering his way through the route. He campuses the climbs and once again took that gold medal. So that's it for today's show. Make sure you come back tomorrow for highlights from Boulder qualifying and of course lots of extra special content.