I had a day of doing other things for the qualifying round of the CWIF but in a nutshell Jernej thought he had done enough to qualify. Jakob knew he hadn't as he didn't do all the problems but as he was leaving in the early hours of Sunday morning anyway whether Jakob did qualify or not wasn't that important.
Before he went though I introduced both of them to the finest pub that is within 10 minutes of my house - The Sheaf - which they were both very impressed with. Whether it was the quality of the barmaids, the beer or just the fact that it an awesome pub that impressed them so I couldn't quite figure out. Me I was impressed by all three elements naturally.
Sunday dawned and having checked the qualifying results I drove Jernej to the Climbingworks so that he had plenty of time to get warmed up prior to isolation. On the way down we had the stereo cranked up loud (with extra servings of Sub and Bass) to the sounds of Tuomas Rantanen to provide some extra SYKE before heading back and dropping the van off back at the house ready to walk down later. Simple reason for this was that Graeme A had promised me a couple of beers for going to the trouble of putting up Team Slovenia and I was going to cash in on that for sure - not for the trouble that Team Slovenia had caused me (which was none) but because the only thing better than a beer is a free beer!
The semis seemed to be going OK but Jernej really struggled on Problem Three - a very technical balancy affair to say the least but he made the bonus hold on his last go but got timed out before topping the problem out by 1-2 seconds which meant that he had finished sixth. He was gutted to say the least as if he had done problem number three in the time then he would have been through for sure. I commiserated with him and then he went off before coming back within five minutes to tell me that he had made the final after all as the top six go through to the final in the CWIF and not the top five as is usual on the World Cup comps. From the depths of despair to the heights of ecstasy would be a good way of describing how he felt and he said that he was going to win it now that he was in the final.
The final was a stellar line-up to say the least featuring Dave Barrans, Tyler Landman, Ned Feehally, Nigel Callendar, Stewart Watson and of course Jernej. Since he had qualified sixth then he was first up on Problem One which he duly made look easy by flashing it. I put it down as an "easy" warm-up to get the crowd going a bit but at the rest of the field came through and none of them could touch it then I started to get the feeling that Jernej's confidence after the semis was not misplaced but that this could really be on. Problem Two saw four of the finalists top it out (Jernej got it second go) to close the field up a bit but Problem Number Three was a real tester. Again Jernej was up first and his sequence looked completely wrong to me but it was subsequently proven to be correct when the other competitors used a similar method and Dave Barrans topped it out. Lastly it was on to Problem Number Four and all Jernej had to do to take the CWIF was to top it out. I was pretty damn SYKED by this stage and after having a look at it from the sidelines I turned to one of the guys I knew and said that it was in the bag as it was so similar to a problem that he had put up in Slovenia.
Did he do it? Of course he did - he fucking destroyed it!
Did he do it? Of course he did - he fucking destroyed it!
We partied hard after that I can tell you!
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