At GoPro Mountain Games in Vail, underdogs rule North America Cup bouldering competition

Both the men’s and women’s professional bouldering events shocked crowds in Vail at the annual GoPro Mountain Games on Saturday.

Dillon Countryman, the 19-year-old underdog who surprised everyone with his unexpected victory, told announcer Ahmed Toure the win might help him get a World Cup start this year at the bouldering season closer Sept. 5 in Koper, Slovenia. Women’s winner Courtney Arnold said she hadn’t competed for a year before this year’s Mountain Games, and wasn’t planning on it until she got to Vail.

In North America Cup-sanctioned events like Saturday’s, climbers who make it to finals have 4 minutes to solve four short climbing problems (called “boulders”) on a wall. The event is scored based on how many boulders they top and how many zones they reach, with extra points given for solving the problem on a first attempt.

Countryman told Toure that after the second boulder didn’t go his way, he knew he’d need to complete numbers three and four.

“I knew I could top boulder 2, I just didn’t end up getting to the top,” he said. “So I really had to focus on my execution of boulders three and four.”

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Countryman said after boulder number two, he reminded himself, “anything can happen, and I just have to keep my composure.”

He did just that, topping problems three and four and going on to win the event. Hugo Dorval finished second, and Simon Hibbeler rounded out the podium in third.

Countryman said he enjoyed the overall atmosphere of the GoPro Mountain Games and commended fellow climber Emma Hunt on her participation in both the Mountain Games bouldering event as well as the speed climbing event, which was just added to the games this year.

Hunt won the speed discipline on Friday and also finished third in the bouldering competition on Saturday.

“That’s so impressive to see, can’t even imagine what her fingertips look like right now,” Countryman said of Hunt.

Hunt said competing in both speed climbing and bouldering took a toll on her, but she had fun nonetheless.

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“Doing two events just adds to the fun, it’s just hype on hype on hype,” she said.

Hunt had never been to the Mountain Games, but after finding herself in Colorado last week for a World Cup speed climbing event in Denver, she decided to stay and compete in Vail.

Hunt, who is from the Atlanta area of Georgia, said she switched to speed climbing as her only discipline in preparation for the Paris Games in 2024, which was the first time speed climbing was featured at the Olympics as a standalone event. She finished fifth and has continued to compete solely in speed since then.

But in recent months, she’s been thinking about bouldering again.

“I saw that Vail was planning on having speed here, and I love bouldering and I haven’t gotten to compete in it in several years, so I said ‘Let’s do it, let’s do both,'” she said. “Last month I decided I wanted to do bouldering, so I trained and now we’re here.”

While she was able to land on the podium in bouldering, it was a race for third as Courtney Arnold and Norah Che ran away with the event, the only two competitors to finish the difficult second-problem boulder.

Winner Courtney Arnold said she was shocked by her victory, telling Toure she wasn’t even expecting to make finals, much less make the top of all four boulders in her finals run.

“My last time competing was here last year,” she said. “I had some friends that were coming out and competing, and initially I was just going to come watch, but I knew for a fact that I would regret it if I didn’t compete after seeing all the boulders.”