UKC

Due to the impact of COVID-19 on the climbing competition calendar - including the postponement of multiple IFSC events and the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games - the IOC has approved an appeal by the IFSC to switch Speed climbing for fingerboarding given the current explosion of the discipline and the lack of access to the homologated Speed route for athletes.

Finally, a climbing discipline in the Olympics that is representative of what actual climbers do.  Fingerboarding will also be much more exciting for the masses to watch than that speed nonsense.  Hopefully they will now go further and replace bouldering with a fashion show of beanies modeled by shirtless climbers.

Edit: I forgot, lead climbing to be replaced with who can shout "Allez, allez, allez!!!" the loudest.

😂👍

Har Har  

Im looking forward to the 1 vs 1 hang off 😂

Hahahaha...........'Ring Finger Roulette'......that's a new one to add to the long forgotten art of finger blasting.

Announce a campusing contest, then just save everybody the trouble & declare Jan Hojer the winner in advance.

This would be a big improvement.

Good April fool.. however I’d really support this

First thought "Is this really what climbing has come to - how depressing?".

Second thought "What day is it?".

Chris

There already is one. 
Enjoy: youtube.com/watch?v=_rCDpfXda9w&

In my morning grog I fell hook, line and sinker for the first paragraph. Though I'm probably jaded enough to believe it any other time of day. Anyhow, very good April Fools!

Well at least it would be more relevant to real climbing than speed climbing. It's actually genuinely a shame it's not true.

“In a bid to ensure the fullest range of climbing talent is featured at the rescheduled Tokyo games, WADA has announced that Chris Sharma will be exempted from non-performance enhancing drug testing. Sharma told UKC ‘Dude, that is like, totally awesome.’”

Yeah, it got me too. I was amazed for a second, confused the next and then the fog lifted and I realised the date.

Good laugh that.

Cheers.

I actually think that would be more interesting to watch than speed climbing...

Well I would certainly be psyched to watch Ondra v Megos in the final on that hideous, slopey two finger thing at the bottom of the Beastmaker 2000. 

Can we get over this "speed climbing is not real climbing" thing already? It might not be relevant to what you do, but I'm sure some of the other sub-disciplines aren't either. 

It's absolutely relevant. So much so that we need to up the pressure to include the equally relevant disciplines of speed-archery, speed-trampolining and speed-weightlifting. The omission of speed-dressage is a massive oversight.

I genuinely would be more likely to watch olympic beastmaking than speed climbing. Please please make it so.

a.k.a. exceptionalism

In reply to Chris Craggs:

Those were exactly my thoughts when they announced speed climbing was gonna be included in the Olympics.

Sadly, it wasn't April 1st.  

I get bored watching both, including my own hang sessions. I'm not saying that the combined format is good (it's not) more just lamenting the fact that everyone seems to hate speed climbing when it's a perfectly valid discipline. 

To extend your argument - lets get rid of the 100 m and just see who can walk further. 

You are missing the point. None of the indoor Olympic disciplines are real climbing. The point is that some of them are more relevant than others to real climbing. People have been indoor lead climbing, indoor bouldering and fingerboarding for years as training for real climbing, but, until it became an Olympic discipline almost nobody in this country bothered with speed climbing. Many real climbers can relate to indoor lead and bouldering and fingerboarding but absolutely nobody I know can relate to speed climbing - in fact almost all see it as a joke.

what's real climbing, and more importantly, why should olympic competition be "relevant" to it?

Love it! Much needed. Thanks!

Before, I had Narasaki edging out Ondra for gold in Men's. Now my money's on Megos for the fingers of steel medal.

On the female side, I had Garnbret over Noguchi. I'm keeping those the same.

The type done on rock.

So that more climbers are likely to be able to relate to it and so be more interested in it.

But many many people from many many other countries bothered about it before it became an olympic discipline. The olympics arent purely for the approval of the British, you know.

sure, I know you prefer rock and alpine. but is climbing a tree any less climbing? and why not make a competition out of that - if anyone fancies it.

you seem to have a very solipsistic point to view on it.  it's not there to interest specifically you, or necessarily other rock climbers.

It's not just climbing. Mountain biking doing similar

https://m.pinkbike.com/news/uci-announces-downhill-domination-tournament-to...

Of course climbing a tree is climbing, but I think it is reasonable to ask whether the Olympic version of climbing should remain rooted in the pastime from which it has emerged or should become more and more divorced from it.

surely if it is to remain completely rooted, then it would remain what it was; training for rock climbing. training isn't much of a spectator sport, sure you'll agree.

the extreme dynamic dyno moves in bouldering, and speed, aren't like any rock climbing that I know. but what does this matter? that's not what it's for.

As soon as you form a competition, it is what it is: entertainment. and, just like running as fast as you like along an artificial surface, fundamentally pointless.

regardless if you enjoy it or not, participant, spectator, umpire or whatever; you can't expect competition to be beholden to anything other that it's own rules.

It matters in that I and many climbers I know have lessening interest in competition bouldering and no interest in speed.

And the competition itself of course. The format seems to be aiming to entertain the general public primarily and climbers second. I would question whether that is the way it should be going.  

I'm really not sure what your point is. Of course competition climbing has to follow it's own rules, but that does not mean it is not worth considering what form and what rules should best have. I am simply arguing that it should avoid becoming too divorced from its roots.  

Yes.  It's absolutely shocking really, almost as if what interests climbers in the UK wasn't considered particularly important for the Tokyo Olympics.

Not sure they took much heed of Kenyan opinion when they introduced Ice Dance either.

Almost? It's absolutely obvious it wasn't considered important.

What!?  Outrageous!  How very dare they? 
(I added a winky thing this time, to make the sarcasm a bit more obvious. hth)

Does Kenya have an ice skating tradition which wasn't reflected in that decision?

I said above that such an attitude seems to me to be a case of UK exceptionalism, and you're not saying anything to convince me otherwise.

Edit: and I'm sure GB had a respected opinion in the decision making process of the IFSC which led to the current situation.

I've no idea whether the inclusion of speed climbing with an equal status to lead and bouldering reflects the global interest, but I'd guess not.

As I understood it, the IFSC were pretty much forced into including speed climbing by the IOC, because they were offered a choice which meant that not including it would have meant also leaving out either lead or bouldering. Happy to be corrected of that is not the case.

The point I'm trying to make is: it is climbing plastic, competitively.

it may have common roots, but it is it's own thing. It is separate both from climbing, and indoor climbing as you practice it [excluding comps]. any effort to see it through another paradigm will only lead you to frustration, confusion and, ultimately, resentment (but you know this already).

We'll have to agree to differ then. I think climbing, both the "real" version and the Olympic competition version, will be richer if the Olympic version remains connected to its roots, of interest and relevant to "real" climbers, and with the best "real" climbers in contention to win medals rather than only specialist competition climbers.

Very funny April Fool....

Had me in stitches!

I think Amii from The BMC sent me an April Fool email.....

.... The greating was just Hi. 

S

Hehe good but a decade on this one still wins.....

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/ukc/major_rock_fall_in_the_south_west-401...

The photo used gives the game away for several reasons:

1) it's a Beastmaker 1000. They would use a Beastmaker 2000 in the real Olympics.

2) there's no chalk on the board, or the person's fingers. Obviously staged.

3) whoever the hand model is hasn't fingerboarded before, well not seriously. How can I tell? The left hand is nearly open hand and the right hand is half crimped. A serious fingerboarder would never make such a basic error.

Poor journalism standards. Very shoddy.

Andy F

That's me in the photo - I never use chalk and I have hyper-flexible fingers! 

You never use chalk? Odd, but fair enough. 

Andy F

Not never but I just forget to use it a lot of the time!

With Jet from Gladiators!!