Ice climbing World Cup 2019: Nikolai Kuzovlev and Maria Tolokonina win Lead, Ekaterina Koshcheeva and Anton Nemov win Speed

Denver, Colorado, hosted the six and final stage of the Ice climbing World Cup 2019 infant of a record-breaking 25,000 crowd that attended the two-day event in the cities Civic Center Park. Denver had the honour of deciding the season’s final rankings and the Lead event went down to the wire, with the only two athletes to have claimed lead gold medals this season - Yannick Glatthard of Switzerland and Nikolai Kuzovlev of Russia - both topping out in the finals. 21-year old Glatthard climbed 11 seconds faster that Kuzovlev to secure gold for the second time this season, but the overall world cup went to Kuzovlev thanks to 4 victories and 2 second places. Glatthard finished third in 2019, behind South Korea’s Heeyong Park who finished 4th in Denver. The women’s event was won domineeringly by Maria Tolokonina who claimed her fifth gold medal of the season while Woonseon Shin of South Korea had to settle for a fifth silver medal. Third place in Denver went to Ireland’s Eimir McSwiggan who also finished third overall in 2019.

Maria Tolokonina proved just as unbeatable in the Speed event as the Lead and she beat Jary Coralie from France who chose Denver to make her 2019 speed debut, while Marion Thomas finished third. Tolokonina’s gold wasn’t enough to win the overall Series though as Ekaterina Koshcheeva took that honour, ahead of Tolokonina and Natalia Savitskaia. The men’s Speed was won by Kuzovlev, evidently on great form in Denver, ahead of David Bouffard and Dmitriy Grebennikov. Season’s gold was won by Anton Nemov, ahead of Kuzovlev and Vladislav Iurlov.

Although the six-event World Cup season which visited South Korea, China, Switzerland, Italy, France and the United States is now over, the UIAA Ice Climbing World Tour still has two major competitions to host. Next week in Oulu, Finland the World Youth Championships will be held before Kirov, Russia hosts the pinnacle event, the biennial World Championships (8-10 March).


Yannick Glatthard


Denver, USA l Lead Finals l 2019 UIAA Ice Climbing World Cup