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Arco 2015, Canadians Push Hard and Competition Wraps Up

The Arco World Youth Championships is over and a week of exciting events has come to an end.

By Shane Murdoch

Day eight and nine had the Speed and Lead finals go down in front of large audiences.

All speed athletes had two attempts to post their best time during qualifications. The top 16 in each category advanced to the single elimination Finals.

Congratulations to BC’s Tristen Gosselin and  Sonja Johanson who both qualified for finals and finished 14th and 13th in their categories. All the Canadian athletes put in a great effort. Elena Moss and Tehya Rogers both missed finals by one spot.

For the Lead Finals, the Youth B and A girls were on the same route again, so the Ashima vs Janja side-comp was still on. Both girls topped their route again. It is going to be fun watching these girls compete over the next several years. So strong.

Sam Avezou from France won the Male Youth B category and Sacha Lehmann from Switzerland won Youth A.

Anak Verhoeven from Belgium  edged out Austria’s Jessica Pilz to win the Female Junior category.

It began to rain hard just before the Junior Males started. The fans were not deterred. Umbrellas came out and everyone was ready for a show. Their route had a large dyno at the beginning of the final roof that turned out to be a crowd pleaser.

The first male out, Jesse Grupper from the U.S., stuck the dyno and topped the route with style. Now he had to sit and watch the last seven competitors to see if someone was going to steal the title from him.

Fifth place climber Bernhard Röck from Austria was the second to top the route and take over top spot. The remaining athletes failed to finish the route.

Full results for Speed and Lead can be found on the IFSC website, here.

Congratulations to all competitors.

[shareprints gallery_id=”14863″ gallery_type=”thumb_slider” gallery_position=”pos_center” gallery_width=”width_100″ image_size=”large” image_padding=”0″ theme=”dark” image_hover=”false” lightbox_type=”slide” titles=”true” captions=”true” descriptions=”true” comments=”true” sharing=”true”]– Photos and text by Shane Murdoch, a B.C.-based climber and photographer covering the Arco competition for Gripped.

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