UKC

With Adam Ondra recently joining the Mammut team, it wasn't long before he'd chosen his favourite harness from their range: the Sender. It's not just Adam's favourite though, Jakob Schubert climbed his way into the medal rankings at the 2019 World Championships with the Sender harness. 

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FIFY 👍

This kind of marketing spiel is desperately annoying. Ondra has barely switched sponsor and already has a 'favourite harness' which just happens to be Mammut's flagship model. What a surprise! As for the idea that harness model has anything to do with Jacob doing his thing in the comps, well... The less said, the better. 

The absolute irony in this situation is that Ondras old sponsor BD has by far the best value/performing harness range on the market right now. The Zone or Technician cost less, have a smaller packsize and are just as comfortable than the best offerings from Mammut/Petzl/Edelrid etc. 

I'd be more than happy to see some content of Ondra presenting the harness and explaining what features he finds good about it or whatever, but the leverage of Ondra/Jacobs celebrity image to attach pseudo-endorsement to an existing product is nauseating. Unfortunately this is completely on brand for Mammut.  

p.s. no direct criticism here for the UKC team and I appreciate you're just passing along the brand message. 

Whilst I don't necessarily disagree with anything here, it's interesting that there is a wider feeling (across the board, far beyond this harness and the nonsense put out by Mammut) that climbing is somehow largely immune to things like celebrity sponsorship, marketing, and corporate guff. Don't get me wrong, this kind of claptrap gets my back up too, it's just an interesting observation that the monetisation of climbing is a) so noticeable, and b) so cringeworthy, in a way that it isn't for many other things. I guess it's a product of climbing's history and (arguably former) status as an 'outsider' activity.

TL;DR - I'm off to buy the harness, which will make me a better climber. 

Enter the competition first, you might get a freebie.

Hope the orange glow makes you elevate up the rock as effortlessly as the daily sunrise