Under the stunning backdrop of crashing waves in Bali, nobody shined brighter than American Samuel Watson. In the semi-finals, he blitzed up the wall in 4.67 seconds, breaking his own world record set at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. In the final, he lined up next to Ryo Omasa looking to take his first gold this season and he clinched it in anticlimactic fashion when Omaso was called for a False Start, handing the gold to Watson. That wasn’t the end though, as Watson took the opportunity afforded to him and chose to go ahead and climb the wall once, uncontested, just he and the clock. Unbelievably, he bettered his semi-final time and set yet another world record, hitting the scoring pad in just 4.64 seconds. 

After a surprise early exit before the medals a week ago, Alesandra Miroslaw absolutely dominated the speed wall for the women. Once getting through qualifications, she did not allow a race to even be close, winning all four races by a minimum of six tenths of a second. Yafei Zhou got the silver, while Adi Asih Kadek won the Small Final in front of her home crowd to take home the bronze medal. 

The shock of the weekend came when Sorato Anraku fell moving to the 25th hold in the semi-finals, meaning he finished 16th, well outside the finals after gold in the opening boulder and lead events of the season. This opened the door for a new winner in the men’s final, which featured a sideways jump rather low on the wall that, while not immensely difficult, was clearly a move that made the climbers take notice. 

Max Bertone was the first on the wall in the final, and he made it look like it was going to be a high scoring final, getting up the head wall all the way to hold 41 right out the gates. The route was far from forgiving though, as two climbers failed to reach hold twenty, and only three got to hold 31. Alberto Gines Lopez nearly matched Bertone, but fell at 39+. The final climber of the day was Satone Yoshida, and Bertone was still atop the leaderboard. Yoshida’s climb was anything but boring, as he looked to get himself in difficult positions multiple times, none more so than when he got the rope stuck underneath a volume and was really having to fight the rope the final third of the wall. Despite this, he made it to the head wall and reached hold 42, securing himself the gold and knocking Bertone down to silver. 

The women were the nightcap, and they put on an absolute show! Mia Krampl put forth her typical edge of your seat performance and made it near the headwall, but that was only good enough for 7th. Ai Mori reached the top of the wall and clipped in, but time had run out, meaning she only got credit for hold 45. Still, essentially topping the route put her in an excellent spot, but that wound up only being good enough for bronze. Chaehyun Seo also made it to the top and clipped with time left on the clock after ending in a shared gold medal position a week ago with Erin McNeice . Seo and McNeice were the only two to top the route in the semi-finals, but McNeice had the better qualification score, meaning she got to climb last. McNeice naturally went on to match Seo again, and topped the route with almost the same time yet again, but that qualification score meant McNeice got to claim the gold all to herself, and Seo was awarded silver. Seo and McNeice are quickly becoming a rivalry to watch this IFSC season. 

The next IFSC World Cup event comes May 16-18 as we go back to bouldering in Curitiba, Brazil, where there was a recent fire at the facility but all reports are the event will be able to proceed without issue.