Canadian Men in Munich for Bouldering WC
The second-to-last Boulder WC of the season is happening this weekend in Munich, Germany. Canada will be well represented by three of our top male athletes: Sean McColl, Jason Holowach and Lucas Uchida. Qualifiers are on Saturday, Semi-Finals and Finals on Sunday.
Watch Semi-Finals on Sunday at 12pm local time (6am ET, 3am PT) or watch the replay:
Watch Finals on Sunday. Men at 5pm (11am ET, 8am PT); Women at 7:15pm (1:15pm ET, 10:15am PT)
The World Cup schedule seems tighter this season, with the Munich stop on the tour moved up from its usual August date to May 18-19, 2019. Athletes will have had two weeks off after back-to-back competitions in China and, then, three weeks after Munich they head to Vail, Colorado.
Any athlete with sights on competing in the Olympics will also compete at some Lead World Cup events. That circuit begins on July 4, in Villars, Switzerland, four weeks after the Vail Boulder WC. That’s only a month to switch gears and shift training from bouldering to lead fitness.
As a result of this demanding schedule, athletes are opting out of some events to create a more manageable competition schedule. Canada’s Alannah Yip, for example, is notably absent from this weekend’s competition in Munich. She posted on social media that she’s missing this event, as well as Lead Speed Nationals, to go home to B.C. for a bit and begin training for lead.
Many of Japan’s top competitors won’t be in Munich either. Missing from the starting list: Tomoa Narasaki, Kokoro Fujii, Kai Harada, and Keita Dohi. Of course, with such a deep field of talent, Japan will still be well represented by Keita Watabe, Tomoaki Takata and Yoshiuyuki Ogata. Team Japan is perhaps in a unique situation wherein due to caps on number of competitors, they need to be strategic about who competes to make sure everyone on the long list of high performance athletes gets a chance to earn points.
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