Janja Is Back! Don’t Miss the World Cup This Weekend

The penultimate Lead World Cup of the 2024 season begins tomorrow in Koper, Slovenia. It’s the first World Cup since the conclusion of the Paris Olympics at the beginning of August. Many Paris Olympians are registered to compete at the event, including climbing’s only two-time Olympic champion, Janja Garnbret of Slovenia.

Garnbret will be joined in Koper by many of her Paris competitors including Oceania Mackenzie, Jessy Pilz, Zelia Avezou, Erin McNeice, Laura Rogora, Camilla Moroni, Chaehyun Seo, and Mia Krampl. The men’s comp doesn’t have as much Olympic talent attending, but some huge names will still be there. Paris gold medalist Toby Roberts and silver medalist Sorato Anraku are attending. So are Olympians Sam Avezou, Dohyun Lee, Sascha Lehmann, and Luka Potocar.

Non-Olympians, Mejdi Schalck and Yannick Flohe are expected to attend, as are 10 Team Japan members who didn’t get the chance to compete in Paris including Taisei Homma and Yoshiyuki Ogata. A few big names are skipping Koper including Ai Mori, Miho Nonaka, Oriane Bertone, Brooke Raboutou, Natalia Grossman, Jakob Schubert, Alberto Gines Lopez, Adam Ondra, Alex Megos, Tomoa Narasaki, Jesse Grupper, and Colin Duffy, among others.

With Koper being the second last World Cup of year, the stakes are high for who will win the title of Overall Lead World Cup Champion for the 2024 season. In Women’s, Mori is currently the leader with 3610 points, followed closely behind by Garnbret with 3000 points. Garnbret has the opportunity to pull ahead of Mori with the event in Koper. In Men’s, it’s a tight race between Anraku (3040 points) and Roberts (2990 points). Koper will decide who heads into the final Lead World Cup of the year in Seoul on top.

Several of Canada and the United States’ top talent will be competing in Koper, although no Team USA Paris Olympians are participating in the event. See below for the full list of Canadian and American athletes registered to compete in the Koper Lead comp.

Men

• Ross Fulkerson (USA)
• Nathan Sato (USA)

Women

• Cedar Pidgeon (CAN)
• Molly Dreher (CAN)
• Annie Sanders (USA)
• Adriene Akiko Clark (USA)
• Olivia Ogier (USA)

Livestream Schedule

The Koper Lead World Cup semi-finals and finals will be livestreamed on the IFSC’s Youtube Channel, with the streams embedded below. Here’s the livestream schedule:

Women and Men’s Lead semi-finals – Friday September 6 – 2:00pm ET (11:00am PT)
Men’s Lead finals – Saturday September 7 – 2:00pm ET (11:00am PT)
Women’s Lead finals – Saturday September 7 – 3:00pm ET (12:00pm PT)

We’ll be covering the results so be sure to check back in to Gripped Indoor Climbing for the latest news.