World Cup Vail

We arrived back in London on Sunday and flew out to Denver Monday. Gaz and Dave amused themselves for almost the entire 9hr flight with the in flight magazine which had some inspired 'everything you didn't know you needed' gadgets in including a tail gate hanging seat set for your truck. I made my way through several films. Pete my partner and team GB fan for the trip had started feeling a bit worse for wear and covered himself from head to foot in a United Airlines blanket (no mean feat for a 6'3" bloke) and mostly did an impression of a grey chequered ghost wearing a seat strap.


The condo at Antlers in Lionhead was lovely. Bigger than expected. Gaz decided that everything in the kitchen was modelled around needing to fit in a large Christmas turkey. The fridge was big enough to fit in... anything and anyone including Dave. The bedroom had a flat screen tv that Pete watched from his sick bed (he had flu and was in bed for several days).


Vail was either hot or cold with no in between depending on whether the sun was shining or not. I got more colour than intended watching my fellow competitors in the qualifiers, but froze watching the final. We had sun, rain and snow. Denver had a couple of tornadoes. We were concerned that the comp wouldn't happen at one point when the open air wall was wet through. The juniors climbing the day before us climbed under make shift tarps and the crowd couldn't see the climbing.

On Thursday evening we had an opening ceremony where we paraded with our respective country flags. The commentator ticked all the boxes eventually finishing with 'dude' just at the end when we had given up hope long after 'sweet', 'sick' etc. Everyone was totally stoked to be there!


The day of the qualifiers was luckily a dry day. The qualifiers were nails. Only one of the women's blocs was topped, but not by many. I feel that I climbed well and pulled off some really good moves, but not enough to get many bonus holds. I gained one bonus and came close to two others.

Along with 3 of my fellow competitors, I was attacked by a banner with a lump of wood attached to it whilst I was attempting the last bloc. Despite gaining a rest and half a minute extra of climbing time due to this technical incident I got no further. I was greatly inhibited on one bloc due to my shoulder, but on the whole it behaved itself and didn't break. Phew.

I came 29th - hooray points despite being joint last with 8 others! I am pleased that I could climb at all so to get in the top 30 was great.

The men's qualifier was also nails and most the lads faired no better than me with one exception. Tyler in his first World Cup qualified and made it through the semis to the final where he came a very respectable 6th. Check out the BMC article here. Nice one Tyler.

The altitude (2500m) was noticeable but it didn't feel like it affected my climbing performance particularly. Arriving a few days before the comp and doing some training probably helped. The dutch team said that they felt it a bit - however they are used to being at or below sea level!

The Vail World Cup was part of the Teva Mountain Games. Other sports included speed bouldering, freestyle kayaking, mountain biking, trail running, mudrunning, dock dogs to name but a few.

We saw some wildlife - sparrows, magpies, and humming birds! I couldn't make it up. Thankfully we didn't see any bears, but the convalescing Pete saw a chipmunk.

p.s. despite what others may suggest, we managed to eat quite healthily most the time. whilst surrounded by steak houses, burger joints etc. However, on our final morning we had eaten all our supplies of cereal etc and had to hunt out an alternative breakfast.... the diner was full so we had to settle for a pizza joint! I chose a pizza with pineapple and had a fresh orange juice with it (yes, I'm trying to make excuses). Others choices made were Caesar salad, steak sandwich and fries and soup with garlic bread!! Yum, yum breakfast.