William Bosi climbed into bronze position at this weekend's IFSC European Youth Championships at the Edinburgh International Climbing Arena to top off a fantastic weekend of international competition climbing.

Over 250 of Europe's finest young climbers flocked to Edinburgh to compete on some of the steepest walls on the circuit and to show yet again that the juniors are just as strong and fast as the seniors!

With the introduction of a semi-final for the first time to help the athletes prepare for events such as world championships and the senior world cup circuit, Saturday was a long day for all involved, but the BMC volunteer belayers, judges and camera operators did an amazing job of keeping everything running smoothly to make the event the great success it was.

This all paved the way for Sunday's very exciting finals. Young Edinburgh local William Bosi qualified for the lead final in 7th position in the Male Youth A category. He was out second in the final and put in an excellent performance that saw him sat in first for a while. When the next few climbers came out and exceeded his highpoint we all thought he had been knocked off the podium, but it turned out one of the French climbers had missed a clip and his score was reduced. So it was down to Swiss climber Jean Luca Posch, who had qualified in first position, to knock William off the podium; however, a foot slip lower down on the route saw William retain his bronze medal position, which is a great achievement for GB Climbing against such strong opposition.

GB Junior Lead team manager Ian Dunn had this to say - "William put in a fantastic performance and we are all really proud to see him back on the podium. The rest of team GB climbed really well and we were unlucky not to have a few more athletes vying for podium places in the final!"

After the lead final, the speed finals kicked off with some incredibly quick times being recorded. The best was saved to last with Aleksandr Shikov from Russia putting in the fastest time of the weekend on the very last climb of the weekend - 6.19 seconds (note that the Senior World Record is 5.60 seconds)!

Full results from the event can be viewed on the IFSC website

GB Climbing Team member results

Lead discipline

Male Junior
Alex Waterhouse - 13th

Male Youth A 
William Bosi - 3rd
Jim Pope - 12th
Angus Davidson - 15th
Aiden Roberts - 21st

Male Youth B
Kieran Forrest - 15th
Sam Oakes - 21st
Alex Norton - 27th

Female Junior
Molly Thompson-Smith - 15th
Tara Hayes - 17th

Female Youth A
Hannah Slaney - 11th
Rebecca Kinghorn - 23rd

Female Youth B
Kitty Morrison - 22nd
Issy Adams - 28th
Catrin Rose - 32nd
Abbie Rivett - 34th

Speed discipline

Male Junior
Alex Bosi - 12th
Alex Waterhouse - 13th

The GB Climbing Team is supported by the BMC and the Route Setting Association.

The EYCH was supported by Mammut, Entre-Prises and DMM.

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