Heart pounding head to head races between speed climbers from 39 countries

 Speed Climbing Finals provided thrills and heart pounding excitement to the spectacular crowds viewing the youth speed World Championships in the heart of beautiful Valence France today. Spectators cheered local French team favorites, and the challengers to the solid and amazingly fast Russian team, as well as speed climbers from Venezuela, Italy, Poland, Ecuador, Kazakstan, Ukraine, Germany, Canada, Suisse, Slovenia, Hungary, Czech Republic and the US.

It was exciting to watch the head to head races up the 15 meter standardized speed climbing wall. Spectators could easily see the winning time and often added to the spirit of the event by loudly cheering for certain climbers. This exciting climbing event is becoming vastly popular.

Among competitors from 39 countries who competed over the 4 day Youth World Championships. Times were unbelievably fast.  Winners for the Male and Female categories were:

Male Junior-Sergey Abdrakhmanov (Russia) with an unbelievably fast time, Male A-Leonardo Gontero (Italy) who brought home the first Speed Gold Medal for Italy, Nikita Suyushkin (Russia) who had redemption after not being able to compete in the Youth World Championship Lead finals.

Female Junior-Alina Gaydamokina (Russia) who flew up the wall, Female A – Dinara Fakhritdinova (Russia) who looked both graceful and fast as she won against her fellow Russian team member, and Female B-Aleksandra Rudinska (Poland) who won Gold for an obviously well trained and fast Polish team.

Team awards were also presented during the closing Speed ceremony. Team winners were:

Gold          Russia

Silver        Austria

Bronze     France

We congratulate all climbers who competed in the IFSC 2009 Youth World Championships. Please see www.ifsc-climbing.org/results for more details.