Congratulations Wedrik Leonardo with Indonesia as IWGA Athlete of the Month for May 2023!
Veddriq Leonardo (26) is very fond of Salt Lake City. For the third time in a row, a mountaineer from Indonesia won the IFSC World Cup in the American city. At the end of May, he won the final with a time of 4.95 seconds. To storm a 15-meter wall in less than five seconds, you might want to say: wow! Veddriq Leonardo says: “This is not my first time!” In late April, he set a new world record in the quarter-finals of the IFSC World Cup in Seoul, Korea, clocking a best time of 4.902 seconds here.
The 2022 World Games champion in Birmingham, USA, is thus the first and so far only climber to complete the wall in less than five seconds. And it wasn’t Veddriq Leonardo’s world record debut; he achieved such a feat already in 2021 (5.208). Where? Of course in Salt Lake City, at the IFSC World Cup.
Veddriq Leonardo now has his eye on a new favorite city – Paris. At next year’s Olympic Games, he wants to win gold for Indonesia in the speed discipline. It must be said that he has a strong competitor for this dream. With his world record in April, he broke the best performance of his compatriot Kiromal Katibin, but in May 2022, Kiromal Katibin in turn broke the world record of Veddriq Leonardos, set in 2021. The World Games 2022. Gold went to our Athlete of the Month for May. Kiromal Katibin struggled due to a fall.
Even so, the word “competitors” seems a bit misleading: “We’re like brothers,” say two of the world’s best speed climbers. They see this “brotherhood” as the key to their success. “We train together and we race together. This friendship only fizzles from time to time. And even then, only for about five seconds: they’re only adversaries when they’re competing against each other. Kiromal Katibin cheered on his ‘brother’ during his World Cup victory in May, when Veddriq Leonardo defeated China’s Wu Peng.
You can enjoy the amazing world record race in Seoul Eurosport.
World games is a multi-sport event organized every four years by the International World Games Association, organized with the support of the International Olympic Committee. The 2022 World Games took place in Birmingham, Alabama, USA from July 7-17, 2022. 3,600 athletes from 34 sports and 100 countries participated in the games. The 12th edition of The World Games will be held in Chengdu, CHN in 2025.
