Sitting at the top of the women’s Boulder qualification round are USA’s Annie Sanders, Great Britain’s Erin Mcneice and China’s Yuetong Zhang.

Whilst Sanders and Mcneice are no stranger to the position, for Zhang it is something of a rarity. Don’t be mistaken, Zhang is a very good climber and beat a lot of very good Asian climbers to qualify for Paris 2024, but even she admits qualification doesn’t always go as smoothly as in Bern.

“I’m happy, I think it’s the first time I’ve topped five boulders in qualification. I don’t really care where I am in the standings, just that I could finish all the boulders.”

Despite not caring, her performance will put others on notice because of where she currently sits and if she can her levels up surely a podium place is within reach.

Zhang’s approach to Bern qualification was the key to getting her 124.8pts score: “Thinking back to last year here, and Keqiao at the start of the season, I think the boulders were really hard and my performance was ok, so I wasn’t as worried about this competition as I thought it couldn’t be as hard.

“But I still needed to focus. The first boulder I was a little confused but after that I was ok.”

That first boulder was where Zhang dropped her points with three attempts, all her other boulders were flashed. Compared to Mcneice who was in the same group, the Brit took two attempts on both boulder three and four for her 124.8pts.

Sanders actually secured the top score of the round with 124.9pts, but with two groups, it meant a share of the lead and not a standalone first.

The rest of the top ten had a few familiar names with Japan and France represented strongly with the likes of World Cup winners Mao Nakamura and Oriane Bertone in the mix and USA’s Brooke Raboutou adding a little Olympic flavour to the top of the order.

HOME SUPPORT SPURS SOFYA ON

With 75 women starting, Switzerland’s Sofya Yokoyama was out relatively early in the round, well into the first half of the climbers. After climbing in this position, you have an idea of where you may finish, but you don’t always want to say it out loud.

Speaking after her climbing was finished Yokoyama said: “I don’t want to jinx it, but I think I am ok. I would like to wait until the very, very end because you never know what can happen. There’s a few more to come that could get ahead of me, but I think I am ok.”

Luckily, she didn’t ‘jinx it’ finishing in 17^th overall with a strong round of five topped boulders for a score of 124.3pts: “It was a really good round for me. I don’t think I have climbed this well in so long. I had so much fun, I knew what I had to do, I felt I had focus, and I mean the crowd and being at home gave me so much more motivation.”

Yokoyama is the only climber from her nation to make it through to the semi-final, and there’s a few our climbers in the same position. Other sole representatives are Australia’s Oce Mackenzie, Italy’s Camilla Moroni, South Korea’s Gayeong Oh and the climber sharing the final semi spot, Geila Macià Martín. The Spanish climber sits joint 23^rd with France’s Lucile Saurel.

RESULTS

Full results can be found here

WHERE TO WATCH

The World Climbing Series Bern 2026 continue with the men’s qualification at 15:30 (UTC+2:00).

The semi-final and final rounds will be live streamed on the World Climbing YouTube channel, with geo-blocking applied to selected countries and territories.

For all the facts and stats of the event click here.

For an overview of where to watch the event click here.

News and updates about all World Climbing events will be available on the official website, and on the Federation’s digital channels: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube, and exclusively for the Chinese audience, Bilibili, Douyin, Weibo, and Xiaohongshu.