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View of mountains and flowers above Villars
Photo by Vsevolod on Unsplash

Villars Lead and Speed World Cup Preview

Adam Ondra returns, while the race to join Veddriq and Katibin below 5 seconds continues.

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This weekend we see Lead and Speed climbers return for the Lead and Speed World Cup in Villars, Switzerland. This World Cup will be the 7the time Villars has hosted a World Cup since 2016.

Lead

Adam Ondra will return to competing in Lead this weekend in Villars. He will be joined by the rest of the finalists in Innsbruck except Mejdi Schlack, who will not compete in Villars. Taisei Homma won last year ahead of Jesse Gruper and Colin Duffy. Can he make it two? Every winner at Villars has been from a different country. Will we see a seventh different winner this year?

Oriane Bertone will compete in Lead for the first time this season, while Ai Mori will not compete. Janja Garnbret will return alongside Chaehyun Seo,Natalia Grossman, Brooke Raboutou, and the rest of the Innsbruck finalists. Janja has won every Lead World Cup at Villars so far. Can she make it seven wins in a row?

Speed

The fastest speed climbers are back, including Leonard Veddriq, the current World Record holder at 4.90s, and Kiromal Katibin as part of an 8-person Indonesian team. Peng Wu, who won last year in Villars, and Jianguo Long also return as part of a 7-person Chinese team. 32 men have raced under 5.50 seconds this season, and 6 under 5.1 seconds: all 6 will be in Villars.

Alexander Miroslaw is not registered for Villars, but all other women who have gone under 7 seconds this season will be there, including Emma Hunt (USA), Aleksandra Kalucka (POL), Natalia Kalucka (POL), Lijuan Den (CHN), Di Niu (CHN), Rajiah Sallsabillah (INA), Desak Made Rita Kusuma Dewi (INA) and Jimin Jeong (KOR).

Schedule, Start list and Live Scores

  • Friday, June 30, 1 pm: Lead Qualification
  • Saturday, July 1, 12 pm: Lead Semi-finals
  • Saturday, July 1, 8 pm: Lead Finals
  • Sunday, July 2, 12 pm: Speed Qualification
  • Sunday, July 2, 6 pm: Speed Finals

All times are in CEST (UTC +2).

Where to watch

You will be able to watch on

  • Eurosport Player within Europe,
  • ESPN Latin America and the Olympic Channel for Central and South America
  • TVRI in Indonesia
  • The IFSC YouTube Channel for other countries

You can catch up on the competition 24 hours afterwards on the Olympic Channel.