Toby Roberts storms Day 9 in the Combined semi-final in Bern

Thursday 10th August 2023

Toby Roberts posted a storming performance in the Lead element of the Combined World Championship in Bern to qualify for the Men’s final in 2^nd place.

Toby Roberts storning the Lead semi-final to qualify for the Combined finals in 2nd place. Photo: Lena Drapella/IFSC Following the individual Boulder and Lead World Championships earlier in the week both Toby Roberts and Molly Thompson-Smith finished in the top 20 highest ranking climbers. As such, they qualified to climb again in the Combined event which kicked off yesterday with the semi-final rounds. The Boulder round was held first, followed by the Lead element yesterday evening. With the first Olympic qualification places being awarded to the top three climbers of the Combined the athletes in Bern are leaving everything out on the walls in an all-out effort to qualify for the final rounds of the Combined and hence the opportunity to compete for the golden Olympic tickets.

Women’s Combined Boulder

Kicking off at 9:00 CET, the Women’s Boulder round was pretty hardcore and – with the exception of a certain Slovenian megastar - scores were pretty low across the board. Like many of the Lead specialists, Molly had to fight hard and in the end she came away with 24.6 points – enough to finish in 17^th place. For context, Brooke Raboutou and Miho Nonaka finished in 3^rd and 4^th with 54.1pts and 53.9pts respectively. In second place was Oriane Bertone (79.4pts) but way out in front was Janja Garnbret on 98.9pts. That sounds like a run-away victory and it was, but Garnbret had to work very hard for that score including coming back to finish off W3 having taken a very heavy 'back-splat' fall having exploded off a double-handed dyno to an undercut! Although she lost her impressive streak of ongoing flashes, Garnbret ended the round with four tops – super impressive when you consider that all the other competitors only managed a total of seven tops between them!

Men’s Combined Semi-finals

The men lucked out regarding the start time for their Boulder round which, begin at 13:00 CET. Although it was a higher-scoring round than the women’s there was no run-away winner. The top four men, Sorato Anraku, Tomoa Narasaki, Paul Jenft and Mejdi Schalck, all finished within one point of each other all clustered just below 85 points. Toby Roberts had a much better round than in the Boulder round of the World Championship earlier in the week finishing with two tops – the second of which was on M4 a super techie slab that only Toby and three other climbers managed to flash. Toby finished the round in 10^th place, two places down from Mickael Mawem the Boulder World Championship winner. Crucially for Toby’s Combined aspirations, his 10^th place finish was significantly better than Adam Ondra (12^th), Alex Megos (15^th) and Jakob Schubert (18^th).

Women’s Combined Lead

Pulling through an obviously powerful crux just above mid-height was sufficient for Jain Kim to collect 72 points and set an early high point on the Women’s Lead route. Molly Thompson-Smith posted a determined performance; sadly she, along with no less than five other women, all fell on the crucial move. In the end, Jain Kim’s early high point proved to be a significant effort on the route as only Janja Garnbret and Ai Mori were able to climb higher. That neither Garnbret nor Mori was able to top out suggests that the setters had ramped up the difficulty on the women’s route from that in the Lead World Championships. Once again, Mori was able to climb higher on the route than Garnbret proving that she really has developed into a considerable force on the Lead wall. Interestingly, Garnbret’s score in the Boulder round earlier in the day was so high that she would have qualified for the Combined final in 5^th place so didn’t need to even climb in the Lead round at all! How impressive is that!

Men’s Combined Lead

The high point to beat on the Men’s Lead route was established by Tokyo Olympian Colin Duffy; climbing confidently he finally fell off high on the headwall earning himself 88.1 points. It was a solid result for Duffy who had up until the start of the Combined hadn’t really been climbing to the levels we’d come to expect; however, it now seems that Duffy has timed his preparations for the Combined to perfection. Perhaps against the odds, Alex Megos, Sasha Lehmann, Sean Bailey and Mejdi Schalck - as well as a number of others – didn’t perform as well as expected and all fell relatively low on the route. Looking very determined, Adam Ondra climbed high before falling off after fighting through several moves seemingly looking very pumped. Although Ondra fell below Duffy’s high point it was high enough to be awarded 80 points.

Of the three men who climbed higher than Duffy it was Toby Roberts that set the Men’s Lead semi-final alight with an absolute storming performance which saw him top the route out. Such is Toby’s Lead form right now that, like in Chamonix earlier in the summer when he won his first Gold Lead medal, Toby stopped and waved at the crowd not once but twice to get them to cheer him on before going on to top-out! Climbing after Toby, both Jakob Schubert and Sorato Anranku also topped out the route although both took the more conservative approach and concentrated on climbing rather than waving at the crowd until they’d finished.

After the Lead round, Toby spoke about his lead performance saying, “That felt absolutely incredible. Having had some results that haven’t been going the best the competition tonight is so nice to be in front of this huge crowd and give a really good fight on a nice route. From the Lead final to tonight it’s really nice to be able to get a result I know I am capable of. Being in that moment, the crowd was just electric, it was incredible. I was so in the moment. I felt really good up there so I turned around and gave them a little hype up, I was properly in the moment and I’m really happy.”

GB Climbing

Both GB Climbing athletes, Molly Thompson-Smith and Toby Roberts put in an incredible effort in the Combined. Sadly for Molly, it was the end of a glorious World Championships but she’ll not only take immense satisfaction in her 12^th place finish in these Championships but will look to build on this going forward in the remaining events at which the remaining Olympic invitations will be handed out. For Toby, he finished the Combined semi-finals in 2^nd place so he’s back in action in the Men’s Combined final on Saturday evening vying for one of the three Olympic invitations.