Ice World Cup, Courchevel - competition halted!

Courchevel structure collapses - competition first suspended, then halted altogether.

Mnet

January 2000

The Men’s Semi-final, Women’s Final and Men’s Final should have taken place in Courchevel on 25 January but instead the entire competition was first suspended then halted completely because the ice structure collapsed early in the morning, even before the start of the Semi-final. Luckily no one was injured but the entire competition had to be called off altogether.

The World Cup points were divided up equally between the 17 male athletes and 8 female athletes that had qualified from the Open. So no change in the World Cup rankings, as FranÃ§ois Lombard remains in first place just ahead of Will Gadd, while Irina Ryzhenkova leads the female field ahead of Margarita Kolodkina and Ildi Kiss.

The speed climbing competition, held the previous night , followed in much the same vein as the one in Pilztal, with some of the athletes wearing only underwear! Thomas Seinbrugger saw off all competition to win first place, ahead of Iouri Oleinikov and Will Gadd. First female athlete was Kim Csizmazia, followed by Margarita Kolodkina and Lydia Frolova respectively.

In the light of yesterday’s events, the next Ice World Cup event in Cortina this weekend should prove even more interesting than anticipated. This is the only Ice Boulder competition in the entire circuit, and the organisers have announced that some of these boulders will be truly awesome.
In the mean time, the photo depicted above is a sneak preview of the structure currently being "constructed" in Cortina. Temperatures are well below freezing: Saturday and Sunday should prove to be quite something.

(the new structure in Cortina, currently under construction)

Courchevel

Men’s Semi-final		Women’s Final
Eric Svab	ITA	Kim Csizmazia	CAN
Tim Emmet	GB	Ildi Kiss	HUN
Julian Neumayer	AUS	Margarita Kolodkina	RUS
Francois Lombard	FRA	Lydia Frolova	RUS
Pavel Slepnev	RUS	Irina Ryzhenkova	RUS
Will Gadd	CAN	Marie-Pierre Dufrene	FRA
Aljaz Anderle	SLO	Isabelle Carrier	FRA
Garthwaite	GB	Alenka Jerala	SLO
Alexej Tomilov	RUS
Erwan Le Lann	FRA
Kim Yong Kee	KOREA
Juri Oleinikov	RUS
Bruno RÃ¼disser	AUS
Neil Gresham	GB
Jerome Blanc-Gras	FRA
Sam Beaugey	FRA
Mauro 'Bubu' Bole	ITA