The first of the Olympic Qualifier Series has begun, with 48 women and 46 men competing in Shanghai, for a total of twenty-four tickets to the Paris Olympic games.
© The Olympic Channel
Nothing will be decided at this event, as it is the combined score across the two OQS events that will decide who makes it to Paris. However, a good performance in Shanghai will have the climbers with one hand on that elusive Olympic ticket, even if they have to wait for Budapest to make the final match...
The OQS will also be a great opportunity for athletes and viewers to sample the new Olympic Scoring System, which Natalie explained in detail in the article below.
You can watch the boulder qualifications, which happened early this morning, here.
© The Olympic Channel
Comments
There’s a link in the article to the scoring explainer.
The scoring for the two events is pretty well hidden in the IFSC website. It's here https://www.ifsc-climbing.org/olympics/oqs under OQS Points System - Sport Climbing.
The winner of each event gets 50 points, 2nd place gets 45, third gets 41, fourth 38, fifth 36, then each subsequent position gets one less than the one before. These scores are summed to give the overall ranking.
Ties are broken by the score at Budapest, and, in the event of a tie at Budapest, by the current World Ranking.
Maybe someone from BMC GBClimbing department could come on here and explain! It would give them a chance to make contact with real climbers, prospective competitors and others! They are not too good at publicising their achievements! They don't post videos, results, have a BMC display at their events etc etc!
If it wasn't for UKC, only a very few people would know they existed, and those few that do, do not appear to be too impressed!
Congratulations to all our athletes, junior, senior, elite, para etc. You are a credit to the climbing community and possibly the most dedicated group of people I have ever had the good fortune to meet!
The GB Climbing webpage and GB Climbing Instagram feeds report news and results (spolier alerts apply on the main pages). That's alongside the IFSC site, linked above.
As I said to you before, those paraclimbing coaching staff you met at the indoor wall were almost certainly contractors who have a job to do and that doesn't includes being responsible for marketing the BMC.
I still think your suggestion at the BMC Peak area of volunteers marketing the BMC at indoor walls at busy times could be a big contribution to advertising BMC work and encouraging people to join.
Most climbers who didn't make finals also scored points. Points from Shanghai will be combined with the second event at Budapest points (in a few weeks time), to give a qualification list.