Sharafudtinov and Stöhr win at Baku in Azerbaijan

The winner of the 2013 Bouldering World Cup Dimitri Sharafudtinov was the only athlete who managed to send 3 of the 4 final problems, beating Germany's Jan Hojer who had won the week previously at Chongqing. During this Chinese stage two of the world's strongest boulderers, Rustam Gelmanov and Kilian Fischhuber, had failed to get past the Semifinal and in Baku they set the record straight, placing third and fourth respectively, ahead of Frenchman Jeremy Bonder and Japan's Kokoro Fujii. Stefan Scarperi, the only climber representing Italy, placed an excellent 9th and beat star contenders such as Jorg Verhoeven, Guillaume Glairon Mondet and Jernej Kruder.

In the women's event this year's mantra seems to be composed of Shauna Coxsey, Akiyo Noguchi, Alex Puccio, Anna Stöhr and Juliane Wurm and, alphabetic order aside, we expect to see any of these take top podium positions and in any order whatsoever. Just like last week these fabulous 5 managed to qualify for the final, during which Stöhr, Noguchi, Coxsey and Wurm all sent the four deciding problems. They were obviously split on the number of attempts needed: competing second, Stöhr had managed to flash all 4 and in doing so she no doubt put her rivals under considerable pressure. Noguchi needed just one attempt more to clinch silver, while Coxsey saw hopes of victory vanish on the last problem as her false start was stopped by the judges. To win the athletes need both fingers and nerves of steel... But as we mentioned last week, sooner or later this will no doubt be the British climber's year. Wurm placed 4th, ahead of Slovenia's Mina Markovic and America's Alex Puccio who, after a brilliant Semifinal, failed to prove her true worth in the Final and finished 6th.

The “city of winds” also hosted the second stage of the Speed World Cup and this was won by Danyl Boldyrev and Mariia Krasavina, ahead of Evgenii Vaitcekhovskii and Iuliia Kaplina, and Qixin Zhong and Anouck Jaubert, 2nd and 3rd respectively.

The next stage of the Bouldering World Cup 2014 will take place at Grindelwald in Switzerland from 10 – 11 May.


IFSC Climbing World Cup Chongqing 2014 - Baku
Men
1 Dmitrii Sharafutdinov RUS 3t3 4b4
2 Jan Hojer GER 2t2 4b5
3 Rustam Gelmanov RUS 2t2 3b3
4 Kilian Fischhuber AUT 2t5 3b4
5 Jeremy Bonder FRA 1t4 3b9
6 Kokoro Fujii JPN 1t8 2b9

Women
1 Anna Stöhr AUT 4t4 4b4
2 Akiyo Noguchi JPN 4t5 4b4
3 Shauna Coxsey GBR 4t5 4b5
4 Juliane Wurm GER 4t7 4b5
5 Mina Markovic SLO 2t4 4b4
6 Alex Puccio USA 1t2 2b3