Stari-where?

At the end of April and beginning of May the small seaside village of Starigrad Paklenica in Croatia is transformed by a unique and exciting speedclimbing competition. This year sponsored by Mammut of Switzerland was the 9th. the largest, most dramatic, best supported ever. Competitors arrived from all over Europe, except the UK!

The Route climbed was on the 'Debeli kuk' crag, which is a 160m, graded 6c+ route. There are five pitches on this route and the rules of the competition are fairly simple.

The Final

The mens senior competition final took place on Saturday 3rd. Debeli kuk crag is awesome to behold, sheer with substantial overhangs. The weather was excellent with plenty of sun to satisfy climbers and spectators alike. At 10.00am. The first of eight pairs started their ascent achieving a time of 1hour 17 minutes.

As the day progressed the times got dramatically faster and the crowd more enthused. At 4pm the Swiss entry, Eric Lachat & Giovanni Quirici (climbing as the Mammut Team) started, putting in a blistering initial effort to be 13 seconds up on last year’s best time at the first pitch.

They continued strongly to finish in 28 minutes 50 seconds, just outside last year’s winning time by a mere 14 seconds giving the crowd their winner!....or so we thought.

The next and final pair to go was Igor Corko & Ljubomir Sakac (2007’s Croatian winners). Determined not to lose their crown, Corko exploded from the base of the wall pounding to the first pitch with Ljubo following to achieve a staggering 3 minutes 41 seconds, a gain of over a minute on the first stage.

The 1000 strong partisan crowd were chanting their names, the commentator’s microphone was handed to Corko’s 8-year-old son who joyfully yelled encouragement as his Father rocketed off pitch 4 to the finish. Their time of 25 minutes 05 seconds took a full three and half minutes off their last year’s winning effort.

Results

Flying the flag?

As the only Brit there, I can’t wait for next year’s event. It would be good to have some company over here. if you and a partner think you are hard (and fast) enough, get in touch, we could be interested in a bit of sponsorship.