In reply to AlanLittle:
> So: at what point is Shauna so far ahead that nobody can catch up?
She's currently almost 100 points in front of her nearest rival Melissa Le Neve (300 vs 203). By contrast fewer points than that separate the top 15 men. However with fewer than half the comps yet gone technically anything
could happen.
The thing is that currently Shauna is dominating her current closest rivals and always has done. The one exception is Aikyo who has beaten her numerous times in the past and of course won last year overall. So far Aikyo has had a pretty poor season apart from last week where she started to show some old form and wasn't so far behind Shauna. The other exceptional female competitors are either only a doing a few comps (like Mascarenas, Puchio and Garnbret) or simply aren't climbing anything like they have in the past so far (Anna St£hr).
The other possible rival is Miho. Last week she topped a problem no one else did. Maybe if she gets a boost of confidence from that she might start climbing even better. But I think that's a long shot. She's really strong, but so is Shauna and Shauna has way more experience. (Check out the recent Udo Neumann compilation of this years first comps - some very impressive climbing there).
I think Vail will be a good comp for the women because there are some pretty good US climbers and they'll all be fresh from training, not tired from doing the globetrotting, jet lagging, circuit that must take a bit of a toll. If Shauna could win there that'd be really cool.
Current women's ranking:
http://www.ifsc-climbing.org/index.php/world-competition#!type=ranking&cat=...
Post edited at 23:31