This weekend has seen the World’s elite rock climbers descend on Stuttgart for a truly special competition. adidas ROCKSTARS pairs over 70 invited athletes from over 22 different countries with intense musical performances and a passionate and vocal crowd of over 3500 fans to create an event unlike anything else in the climbing universe.
Even by the high standards of adidas ROCKSTARS, the athlete line-up this year was incredibly strong. Of the 72 athletes who started, the field was narrowed over 2 rounds to just 6 male and 8 female finalists (due to a three-way tie for 6th place in the semi-finals 8 women progressed to the final instead of the usual 6). Amongst those 14 finalists were the reigning male European Boulder Champion, male Boulder World Cup overall winner, male Boulder World Champion, female World Boulder Champion and female Lead World Champion! In addition, there was also at least one previous adidas ROCKSTARS winner in both the men’s and women’s final, meaning that before a hold had even been touched, observers were predicting one of the most fascinating and tight finals in history.
As the arena filled up on Saturday evening the excitement in the air was extraordinary and the already pumped up crowd was encouraged to make even more noise by punkrockers Orange but Green, the mixing master DJ battle and human beatbox Robeat. By the time the athletes were ready to hit the stage the Porsche-Arena was alive and the crowd was creating a wall of noise to welcome their heroes onto the stage.
