UKC

Great Britain's Shauna Coxsey has earned her second bronze medal of the 2019 IFSC World Championships in Hachioji, Japan by placing 3rd in the Combined final after her bronze medal performance in Boulder last week. In the Combined final, Shauna surprised herself by placing 2nd in the Speed round, before going on to a provisional 1st place ahead of the Lead round after finishing 3rd in the Boulder event. A 7th place in lead after being marked down for touching a bolt with her foot dropped her position from 4th to 7th, but ultimately Shauna's Combined ranking stayed the same.

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Something really is iffy with the route setting here. Two top athletes not known for this being penalised for touching a bolt.

Indeed. You would think, given what is at stake, that any extraneous bolts  on or close to the line would be removed?

It wasn't an unused bolt plate for Shauna, if I'm right it was the bolt used for the 4th or 5th clip.

Yes, I figured that when I watched it. In some of the still photos deapth of field made one of of the remaining bolts look like it was close to the line. Which they weren’t. 

I can see why they're doing it but this does show some of the bizarreness of the combined format and multiplied score. The speed specialist was ranked 4th in a combined climbing final despite coming last in both the other events - with a very low lead score and no zones on the boulders. 

Although in fairness looking at some of the other scores speed specialists have put in some decent performances.  

Looked at from a different angle, the clear winner of one of only 3 disciplines didn't even make it into the top 3 places overall.

Really nice interview with Shauna on Radio 5 this morning.  The interviewers were clearly excited about climbing being in the Olympics and Shauna, as usual, was as excited, modest and passionate as ever.  She did a good promotion for climbing as a sport and for the Beastmaker for training.  The interviewers subsequently went and looked up the Beastmaker - the idea of hanging seemed to put them off climbing forever.

The most amusing bit was when Shauna talked about using Gorilla fingers (I assume a reference to FrictionLabs chalk).  The interviewers needed to be reassured she was not using real gorilla fingers.

In the follow-up sport news bulletins it was reported that Shauna had said she would not settle for third in the Olympics as winning was the aim - as usual with these things this was somewhat paraphrasing what she said but this result has clearly given her a massive boost after the last couple of years of injuries and lack of competition.

Fantastic result for Shauna and a great competition overall I thought.  Really exciting and despite all the discussion about the format and scoring I think overall the best women came through the rounds and rose to the top.  Janja and Akiyo clearly deserve their first and second.

Surely the scoring has to be simplified? The general public will be utterly lost (I certainly am). As impressive and fascinating the competitor's performances maybe, it's only half the story. If folk haven't a clue about the scoring they'll likely loose interest pretty quickly. Which would be a shame...