Iuliia Kaplina today broke the Women’s Speed Climbing record with a time of 6.964 seconds. The time was set in an early qualification round of the ongoing IFSC Europe Continental Championships held in Moscow.
Iuliia was on the wall with Patrycja Chudziak of Poland and both were aiming to get to the finals. In the finals round Iuliia took Bronze over Aleksandra Kalucka of Poland. Ekaterina Barashchuk took Gold over Elizaveta Ivanova, meaning the host country Russia took all three medals for Speed as the hosts for the event.
Iuliia Kaplina has set the speed record multiple times – sometimes overtaking herself without competition. The last time she held the record was in 2017 until in April of that year YiLing Song got 7.101 seconds at the IFSC Climbing World Cup Chongqing.
This was later beaten in 2019 by Aries Susanti Rahayu who until today had the world record with 6.995 seconds. That result was the first time a Woman had climbed under 7 seconds in competition. Aries knocked over a tenth of a second off the last record and made a huge jump forward in the timings.
Header photo by @leozhukovphoto. Bouldering will take place over the next couple of days, with Lead on Tues and Weds. The Combined event will then take place on Friday and Saturday 27th and 28th. These events will be keenly watched as the last two invites for the first appearance of Sport Climbing at the Olympic Games will be decided here.
The European leg of the Continental Championships is a controversial one because so many countries have decided not to send athletes for their safety. France, Italy, Austria, and Spain are all not sending climbers and this includes some of the world’s best and previous favorites for Olympic invites.
Russia is also banned from the Olympics so in theory no Russian climber will be able to attend the main event. In reality, some may attend but not be allowed to represent Russia and would compete under a “neutral” flag if they adhere to strict testing regimes. Whether that is possible during a pandemic is yet to be seen.
This event was originally scheduled to take place in March but at first postponed, as were the Olympics themselves.
