British Lead and Speed Climbing Championships results

• Monday 6th October 2014

The weekend of 4th and 5th October saw the British Lead and Speed Climbing Championships take place once again at Awesome Walls, Sheffield. This is always a popular and well-attended event and also played host to the final round of The IFSC Para Climbing Cup. This made for a very busy weekend for both the climbers but also the staff at the wall and the numerous BMC volunteers without whom such an event couldn't take place. The route setters created some fantastic looking routes, particularly some of the final routes which tackled the central and horizontally overhanging section of the main leading wall. In the junior events much of the interest was around the Female Youth A category where two climbers regularly seem to be have been up against each other in recent years. This saw Tara Hayes take on reigning champion, Molly Thompson-Smith, with Tara taking the Youth A title this year from Molly. This rivalry also carried over into the Senior event where Molly retained her title from the previous year with Lucy Mitchell finishing second, pushing Tara down into third. One other pleasing result was Sarah Pashley's winning of the Junior category in her last year in which she will be able to compete at the this age group and after as string of runners-up positions, she also went on to win the speed climbing event in the senior category. Senior champion in the mens's event from the last two years, Ed Hamer, was pushed down into third place behind Dave Barrans, champion in 2011, and the new Senior title holder, William Bosi, who had secured the silver medal spot in the Youth A category in the juniors.