UKC

The list of entrants for this weekend's WC is up and looks pretty interesting.

http://www.ifsc-climbing.org/index.php/world-competition/calendar#!type=sta...

But no Alex Puccio for some reason. However the women's field looks pretty strong with Janja Garnbret, Megan Mascarenas and Margo Hayes entering and Michaela Tracy is part of a strong looking UK team.

Men's field looks very strong as always. No Ondra or GG Mondet, but most of the usual suspects. Ty Landman is part of the UK team but with so many other strong contenders it will still be a major challenge just to make it to the finals.

Any favourites? I'll go for Janja Garnbrett and Alexy Rubstov. Would be great to see Team GB win both male/female which is certainly not out of the question.

In reply to stp:

And I thought it was going to be a thread on bringing toilets to Colorado.

In reply to jimtitt:


That would certainly be more interesting

In reply to jimtitt:

Madness. Colorado isn't ready.

In reply to stp:

Thanks for the heads up,looking forward to it!

In reply to stp:

I recollect that Puccio was only going to enter a couple of events this season, it was either on a trainingbeta or Chalktalk podcasts.

No Sean McColl either, after his performance in the French bouldering championship and CWIF this year I thought it would be an ideal time.

Also Udo Neumann is down as German coach, I thought he left/sacked after Jule Wurm retired?


Alex

In reply to alx:

Sean McColl is in there

In reply to james.slater:

Just spotted! Was looking for him in the women's column for some reason!

The guys a beast, hope he is in the semis & finals

In reply to alx:


Yeah I was surprised by that too.

In reply to stp:

I wouldn't be surprised to see the Japanese women do well.Nonaka and Noguchi seem to have an intense rivalry that really motivates them.

In reply to Sherlock:

Tsukuru Hori qualified in second place just behind Rustam Gelmanov in first.

The women are just starting. Shauna has done the first problem: https://twitter.com/LiamLonsdale

In reply to stp:

And two Brits have made the semis: Dave Barrans and Ty Landman. Great effort and both ahead of Jongwon Chon, Jakob Schubert and Dmitry Sharafutdinov (who didn't make the cut unfortunately).

In reply to stp:

It was a false story told to me by someone and I propagated it on UKB

In reply to stp:

Two Brits in the finals. Ty (qualified first) and Shauna.

In reply to stp:

Is the stream working for anyone else? I'm getting the message that it's a private video.

In reply to Pete Dangerous:

It was working directly from the IFSC web site. Youtube its not. But currently it's stopped on there too with a message 'This Stream was Interrupted'.

Just when Tyler was starting problem 1 too.! :^(

In reply to Pete Dangerous:

Liam Lonsdale is having the same problem with 'OH NO' on his twitter feed.

https://twitter.com/LiamLonsdale/with_replies

Thought the Swiss would have had decent internet access. The semis were far from perfect too.

In reply to stp:

For the women after bloc 1 Melissa was leading with the only flash. The only other top was Shauna and Akiyo got the bonus.

For the men only Jorg and Alexy topped... and maybe Tyler ??? That's when the stream stopped.



I think there's going to be a lot of bummed climbers all around the world.

In reply to stp:

Now working on Youtube

In reply to stp:

Good luck to the team just don't ask me to watch. Watched a bit of a comp live once and realised after about 10 minutes that there's nothing more boring than watching other people climbing when you're not.

In reply to Bulls Crack:

I don't think boring is the right word. Frustrating maybe, boring certainly not.

In reply to john arran:

Yeah definitely not boring. I think the big events are really exciting. I was lucky enough to see the CWIF at the Works and the atmosphere and excitement was amazing. Left me on a high for days.

Watch on a planned rest day and you don't even have to be frustrated.

I suppose, as with all sports, it's good to know a bit about the competitors. But overall I think the World Cups, particularly the bouldering are a great watch. Climbing is such a creative sport.

In reply to stp:

I usually really enjoy watching the boulder comps but I was pretty disappointed by this one for a number of reasons:

1) The actual video streaming. I don't want to be too harsh, I know this will be pretty low budget and probably put together by people on a semi-voluntary basis but it was pretty poor. Excluding the fact that the stream went down for a decent chunk of the finals (not necessarily IFSC's fault) but it felt like a few key moments were totally missed, like people topping out off screen while watching someone repeatably fall off the start of a problem..

2) The setting/route types. To quote someone on Twitter, 'do they not have holds in Europe?'. The semis in particular seemed overkill by volumes, and very far removed from actual bouldering at all (even further than normal!). Several of the competitors expressed their obvious frustration at the lack of actual 'pull hard' problems. Might just be personal but half the fun is watching people jump around doing wild moves rather than watch all competitors repeatedly slip off the same foothold (e.g. women's 4)

3) This comp really seemed to highlight some key weaknesses in the scoring. A good example would be Dave Barrans in the semi's who got further than anyone else on one bloc (only one of two to get the bonus) but because he didn't top, got no credit. Some sort of points per hold system as in the Sisu Masters would have led to quite a different ranking! Finally, it felt that Martin Sradik was robbed of first place, despite having both feet on the bonus, standing up on it and going for the last hold, because he didn't actually touch the bonus with his hand (sort of his own fault, he could have easily reached down), it wasn't awarded to him. Irritating that it just came down to a technicality rather than climbing performance..

That all said, the actual standard of the competitors was impressively high and it was great to see so many GB members performing well! Good luck with the rest of the season!

In reply to samwillo:

Hold by hold scoring does not work as you have vastly different numbers of holds on different problems. Likewise how do you score a volume that you change hand position on maybe 10 times. It has been looked at in depth and the conclusion is that it just doesn't work.

Martin Stranik has been around long enough (medalist at World Champs back in Aviles 2007) to know the rules.

Web cast was by a new company.

In reply to samwillo:

1. Yeah a shame about the live stream, but I think I only missed about 10 mins before I picked it up on Youtube again, so not disastrous. I think it's a shame the qualifications are never recorded though.

2. The setting is definitely different to outside bouldering. It used to bother me but I think now, as climbing moves more indoors anyway, it doesn't matter. Moves like multi point dynos are unlikely to occur on real rock. But they're great to watch nonetheless. The German team training vids are even more radical: the climbing is getting more like parkour. The diversity is what makes climbing a really interesting sport.

3. Well presumably Dave did get the points for reaching the bonus. The question is whether the fact almost no one else did should that mean he deserves more points? That's is an interesting and quite complex discussion. I think the US system might have favoured him more but that has it's own problems too. There's a criitique of the US system on OnBouldering.com. Seems like no system is perfect. Being easy to understand by spectators is another criterium to be considered too.

In reply to stp:

Some fair points by you and Graeme. I guess putting the streaming issue aside since its a bit unfair to expect prime time tv production for what is essentially a very low budget operation!

2) I guess my point with the setting was not that it wasn't representative of outdoor bouldering, I fully accept that comp climbing and outdoor are separate entities and one doesn't have to reflect on the other.. I meant more that in this comp one particular style of problem seemed to prevail. As Jakob Schubert put it on his Instagram: 'The setting of the boulders was questionable in my opinion, almost only volumes and not really any fitness style boulders.'

3) So Dave did get the credit for the bonus, but the scoring system goes Tops/Attempts then Bonus/Attempts. So someone who gets to the penultimate hold on every problem (5 bonus holds but no tops), would score less than someone who gets one top and can't pull off the floor on every other problem. I found that a bit frustrating.. but I accept that there doesn't seem to be any perfect alternative.

In reply to stp:
I have just discovered onbouldering.com, brilliant but of work done by one very dedicated man.

There is a nice podcast interview with him on chalk talk climbing podcast channel, or via their website for non apple users.

In reply to alx:

Cool. Will definitely listen to that. He comes across as a really nice guy on the videos but I don't know anything about him so the podcast will be a chance to learn more about him.