At the Bern WCS competition last weekend, Annie Sanders was imperious in the semi-final. She topped all four boulders, two more than any other athlete. Then in the final she slipped to 3rd.
After the final, I was asked “how often does winning the semi-final translate to winning the final?”
This is the answer.
Winning the semi-final doesn't mean that much
Across the 219 World Cups with finals between 2008 and 2026 (225 had semi-finals, but semi-final rankings only exist from 2008), the semi-final winner went on to win the final just 33.3% of the time.
These 73 times are split between 22 athletes, 8 women and 14 men. That's ~10% of the 208 athletes who have reached a World Cup final. Of these athletes, only 9 have done it more than once.
If we look more broadly at the correlation between the semi-final ranks and the final ranks, we get only a slight correlation of 0.21 for men and 0.33 for women. Correlations are between -1 and 1, with anything over 0.5 or below -0.5 being worth considering as significant.
Multi-World Cup winners don't always win the semi-final
Among multiple World Cup winners, there are big differences between those who do well after winning the semi-final and those who don't.
Natalia Grossman won all 8 finals after her 8 semi-final wins (100%). She has also won 3 other World Cups when she didn't win the semi-final. Janja Garnbret is not far behind with 19 semi-final wins with 14 converted into final wins (74%).
The women's data is skewed by Natalia Grossman and Janja Garnbret results. If we remove them both, then the correlation drops from 0.33 to 0.28, still a meaningfully higher correlation than for the men.
Adam Ondra has the highest record for men, winning 7 semi-finals and going on to win 5 finals (71.4%). He only won 1 World Cup without winning the semi-final first. The next is Kilian Fischhuber, who converted 5 of his 8 semi-final wins (62.5%) into final wins (Kilian won 6 World Cups before 2008, so this statistic is missing some data).
Sorato Anraku has won the semi-final 9 times and gon on to win the final 4 of those times (44%). This includes the Keqiao and Bern WCS events this year. He has won 3 other World Cups without winning the semi-final first.
| Athlete | Sex | SF wins | SF+F wins | F wins | Conversion rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Natalia Grossman | Women | 8 | 8 | 11 | 100.0% |
| Janja Garnbret | Women | 19 | 14 | 18 | 73.7% |
| Adam Ondra | Men | 7 | 5 | 6 | 71.4% |
| Kilian Fischhuber | Men | 8 | 5 | 15 | 62.5% |
| Shauna Coxsey | Women | 8 | 5 | 11 | 62.5% |
| Akiyo Noguchi | Women | 18 | 9 | 21 | 50.0% |
| Gabriele Moroni | Men | 2 | 1 | 1 | 50.0% |
| Katharina Saurwein | Women | 2 | 1 | 1 | 50.0% |
| Keita Watabe | Men | 2 | 1 | 1 | 50.0% |
| Sorato Anraku | Men | 9 | 4 | 7 | 44.4% |
| Anna Stöhr | Women | 18 | 7 | 21 | 38.9% |
| Jongwon Chon | Men | 8 | 3 | 5 | 37.5% |
| Dohyun Lee | Men | 3 | 1 | 3 | 33.3% |
| Jan Hojer | Men | 4 | 1 | 6 | 25.0% |
| Miho Nonaka | Women | 6 | 1 | 3 | 16.7% |
| Rustam Gelmanov | Men | 8 | 1 | 6 | 12.5% |
| Alex Puccio | Women | 9 | 1 | 2 | 11.1% |
At the other end, Dimitrii Sharafutdinov, Jakob Schubert and Tomoa Narasaki have never won a final after winning the semi-final. All of their World Cup wins (10 for Dimitrii and 3 for Jakob) have come without winning the semi-final.
Of Tomoa's 7 wins, 6 came without him winning the semi-final. One came after he won the semi-final and the final round was cancelled due to bad weather (Keqiao 2024).
Winning the semi-final can be a curse
This isn't the first time Annie has won the semi-final and then dropped further down the ranking. She did it in Innsbruck last year, going from 1st to 6th.
But she is not alone.
Jeremy Bonder dropped from 1st to 7th in a seven-person final in Toronto in 2015.
The 1st-to-6th drop is more common: 12 athletes have done it, including Akiyo Noguchi, Alex Puccio, Jernej Kruder, Jakob Schubert, and Meichi Narasaki.
For Annie, this may be the second time she has dropped after winning the semi-final, but she has still won a World Cup. She may be just like many other top athletes like Tomoa Narasaki who never won a World Cup after winning the semi-final, but only time will tell.
News
The first European World Cup of the season wrapped up in Bern last weekend.
Oceania Mackenzie won her first gold medal. She is the first able-bodied Australian to win a World Cup or World Climbing Series gold in any discipline.
She reached her first final at Meiringen in 2019, her second World Cup, and has been in eight more finals since. She won her first World Cup medal in 2024 in Prague (bronze) and her second bronze medal in Keqiao earlier this month.
Sarah Larcombe was the first Australian to win a World Cup gold of any kind, taking Para Climbing gold in the AL2 category at Salt Lake City in 2022.
Erin McNeice won her first silver medal in boulder, completing the set alongside her existing gold and two bronze medals. She was the only athlete to unlock the third slab boulder, topping it and scoring the only points of the round.
Annie Sanders finished third, her sixth Boulder World Cup medal. She was in sharp form in the semi-final round, topping all four boulders while no one else could top more than two.
The Sorato Anraku show continued in Bern, with his seventh boulder World Cup or WCS win. He is now joint fourth in the all-time list of boulder gold medal winners alongside Tomoa Narasaki. He still has some way to go to catch Kilian Fischhuber, who won 21 World Cup gold medals over his 10-year career.
Mejdi Schalck was second again, just one top behind Sorato on this occasion. Hannes Van Duysen finished third to win his fourth Boulder World Cup medal in four years after topping the final power boulder.
Also in Bern, the women's finals boulders were live streamed on Bilibili (Chinese video streaming platform) before isolation was over. This led to the routesetters adjusting the streamed final boulders just before the final.
From Elsewhere
- Aidan and Sam talked to Natalia Grossman on the Careless Talk Podcast about recovering from injuries and her return to competition and winning USA Nationals this year.
- Tension Climbing started a new series visiting people's home TB2 boards. In the first episode, they visit Nick Stegall to climb on his 10×12 TB2 board.
Ticket Update
- The final ticket drop for Innsbruck is happening on 1st June at 9am CEST.
What's coming next week
Last week I recorded a podcast with Natalie Berry, journalist and former editor of UKClimbing, and Tyler Norton, who ran the Plastic Weekly podcast, about how the season is going so far.
If my computer doesn't overheat from editing in the 30°C heat in the UK, that will be coming out next week along with a companion piece in this newsletter.
We are planning to record each month, so subscribe to the Inside Climbing Podcast to get it when it is released.
Update May 26th: A previous version said that all of Tomoa Narasaki's win came without winning the semi-final. This is incorrect as he won the Keqiao 2024 semi-final to win the World Cup after the final was cancelled. He has still never won a world cup after winning the semi-final when a final round was run.
