Kiwis at the Australian Youth Nationals
19/5/2026
The competition season is now in full swing, with the first Lead and Speed World Cup events of the year following on from Boulder. A strong New Zealand contingent also competed at the Australian Youth Nationals, with some great results.
Sport Climbing & Bouldering
German boulderer Yannick Flohé completed a repeat of Nathaniel Coleman's No One Mourns The Wicked at Thunder Ridge, Colorado, USA, in seven sessions—and immediately proposed a downgrade from the original 9A (V17) to 8C+ (V16). Flohé noted 'The main challenge was dry conditions, crazy wind, and my dry skin which made climbing on this glassy polished rock very challenging. I've had days with 15% humidity and crazy wind where I couldn't even do the stand moves, and other days with clouds and rain that felt so sticky that I was able to do the Defying move multiple times in a row for warm up. The day I sent I walked to the crag in the rain with low wind and very high humidity which made the holds much stickier than in the sessions before'. Flohé first climbed the stand start—Daniel Woods' classic Defying Gravity (8C/V15)—before moving to the extended low start, which he estimates adds a roughly 8A/V11 boulder into the sequence. The problem was first climbed by Coleman in April 2022, who thought the low start was more in the range of 8B/V13. (UKClimbing) (PlanetMountain)
American climber Michaela Kiersch made the first female ascent of Dolby Surround (9a+) at the Gstatterboden sector of the Zillertal valley in Austria on 14 May 2026, completing the route after 20 sessions spread across two months and one day. The route presents a compound challenge: bolted in 1998, it saw roughly ten ascents before a crucial hold broke, adding a harder sequence immediately after the original crux—a jump estimated at 8B+/V14 boulder difficulty. The result is a two-crux route Kiersch described as 'one of the most beautiful' she has attempted. Kilian Fischhuber made the original first ascent in 2008 at a grade of 8c+/9a (34/35); the broken hold has shifted the consensus toward 9a+/36. (Gripped) (PlanetMountain)
Competition Climbing
The World Climbing Series returned to Wujiang, China (8–10 May), for Lead and Speed events, producing two standout performances. In the women's Lead final, American Annie Sanders produced a last-second match of Janja Garnbret's high point of 43+—and because Sanders had ranked ahead of Garnbret in the semifinal, she took the gold medal on countback, with Garnbret taking silver and South Korea's Seo Chaehyun claiming bronze. In the men's Lead final, Japan's Neo Suzuki set an early high point climbing first in the final. He evntually won gold as none of the following climbers could match his score of 44+, ahead of Spain's Alberto Ginés López (39+, silver) and South Korea's Dohyun Lee (39+, bronze). (World Climbing)
Sixteen-year-old Chinese speed climber Zhao Yicheng broke his own men's world record for the second time in less than a month at Wujiang, posting 4.54 seconds in the semifinal—an improvement on his previous record of 4.58 seconds, which he had set at the Asian Beach Games in Sanya on 29 April. Zhao then took gold in the final in 4.61 seconds. China's Long Jianguo won silver and American Sam Watson—the previous record holder at 4.64 seconds—finished with bronze in 4.71 seconds. Watson and Zhao will meet again at the next World Climbing Series stop. (Gripped) (World Climbing)
New Zealand speed competitors finished 35th (Julian David), 54th (Ned Johnston) in the men's and 35th (Helen Lee) and 36th (Sarah Tetzlaff) in the women's.
New Zealand also sent a contingent to the Australian Youth Nationals over the weekend, with some really strong results:
U15 Male Lead
Hugo Harkness - 4th
Max Lepper - 7th
U15 Female Lead
Yume Fookes - 1st
Ayla Radley - 8th
U17 Male Lead
Fletcher McGrath - 1st
Xavier Waske-Webb - 2nd
U17 Female Lead
Sylvia Palmer - 6th
Charlotte Chinn - 9th
U19 Male Lead
Lucas Machado Gomes - 19th
Conrad Bolger - 21st
U19 Female Lead
Katie Chinn - 2nd
Xanthe Saunders - 10th
Para Lead
Kaleb Westland - 1st
U15 Male Boulder
Hugo Harkness - 2nd
Max Lepper - 27th
U15 Female Boulder
Yume Fookes - 1st
Ayla Radley - 12th
U17 Female Boulder
Sylvia Palmer - 4th
Holly Meyer - 6th
U17 Male Boulder
Fletcher McGrath - 1st
Ben Giles - 3rd
U19 Female Boulder
Zoe Ball - 7th
Katie Chinn - 9th
U19 Male Boulder
Conrad Bolger - 23rd