[Danny]

M3 was interesting: completely board style with bad feet and not many options for trickery. I assumed Ondra would piss it, but he instead tried to style his way up, and got shut down. As good as he is, he could probably benefit from some Malc-style training. Finals were good IMO, apart from F4. 

[Pako]

The men's finals were really interesting in showing the different strengths and weaknesses of the finalists. The top of M3 was quite a highlight, as was Jan's top of M2. Imagine how good Ondra would be if he got Malcishly strong. Yeah F4 was a bit silly. The other female problems were good. I had hoped that there could be a different commentator alongside Shauna though... 

[Stubbs]

On M3 i assumed that dry skin and slick slopey holds were not a great combination for Ondra.

[Neil F]

Great commentating debut Shauna, though I hope for your sake, that you don’t have to do it again.  But if you do happen to bump into your co-presenter from yesterday, please tell him that shouting his commentary, to the point the sound feed distorts, is definitely not cool.  The microphone he has been furnished with is actually there so he doesn’t have to shout.  And shouting aside, his persistent wittering does grate after a while.

Of course it should be possible to just turn the sound down and enjoy the visuals, though in this case the utter ineptitude of the film crew and particularly their director (sic) meant there would have been little chance of comprehending what was happening.  Never have so many key moments been missed completely, overwritten by irrelevant repeats of meaningless tight in shots of peoples feet, or distant shots where all the detail was lost.  This really was an utter waste of a live feed, which is a shame as there are obviously a lot of folk all around the world, keen to watch such competitions.  And judging by the rolling comments most were equally frustrated by the crap pictures…

[Pako]

Poor guy. His little bowl of water was quite something. I remember reading that he said he lost a lead world cup due mainly to his skin being too dry. I wonder what causes his problem?

[Pako]

The most fucked thing about it is that they have had that same commentator for years now, he features in practically all the lead and boulder world cups. Surely someone would have told him by now to change his formula? His constant cliches of screaming out the climber's surname or nationality whenever they make a move is infuriating, and his obvious lack of knowledge about the sport is even more so.

[Stubbs]

I wonder what causes his problem?

Have you never come back from a trip with rhino hide fingertips that are awesome for climbing all day outside, only to go back to the wall and find that you can't hold on to any slopers as your skin doesn't deform into the fine texture of the holds?

[Danny]

Although I'm not sure his rhino skin was necessarily the main reason for failure on M3, he seemed powered out to me.

[TheTwig]

Somewhat dissapointed by the finals. I watched most of it on 'catch-up' and ended up skipping watching nearly everyone apart from anna/jule/ondra/hojer. Didn't exactly make for great viewing having everybody fall off everything!

[jwi]

I like the commentator.

[r-man]

Somewhat dissapointed by the finals. I watched most of it on 'catch-up' and ended up skipping watching nearly everyone apart from anna/jule/ondra/hojer. Didn't exactly make for great viewing having everybody fall off everything!

So you skipped Jakob? Thought he did well - would have been fighting for the win if he hadn't bungled the top of 1. Crushed the top of the dyno problem which Ondra couldn't do.

[Pako]

Stephan Scarperi's send of M3 was a good watch, hope you didn't skip that.

[Durbs]

I enjoyed the finals - interesting problems, arguably a tad too hard for the men, but still got a good split. I thought F4 slab was a nice route, though shame no one topped it.

Also a shame the camera crews and producers seemed more intent on showing replays and crowd views rather than the actual climbing. Slight Austrian bias too (arguably understandable), do kind of wish they'd take direction from the IFSC crew but there we go.

Still don't like this commentator - thought he was ok in the semi's, but quickly tired of him for the finals. Just seems intent on rolling out as many clichés as possible ("his destiny's in his own hands" x3), and just seems like a generic sports commentator which sits at odds with bouldering really. I've said it before, but he always seems to say negative things (which Shauna kept pulling him up on); pointing out they can't win, or are out of their league, "playing for pride", "her crown has slipped" and suchlike. 

Surely there must be a climber/boulderer who could offer intelligent comments rather than just filling out the airwaves (and yes - you don' HAVE to talk constantly).

Flipside, Shauna was a good colour commentator!

In terms of World Cuppage:
Jule Wurm looked in great form. Cruising things Anna was struggling with - but certainly giving Shauna something to worry about (though I suspect she doesn't as they're all chums :D )
Mina M seemed solid on the slab, but struggled on the steeper stuff
The other ladies seemed good, but I get the feeling for the World Cup events, we'll be looking at the "usual suspects" in most of the finals.

Jan looked great on M2 an M4, proper beasting. Ondra looked either out of sorts, or out of his comfort zone. Even M3 which I would've thought would suit him more he failed to even make the bonus (I think?), and he really struggled under the roof (we never did see the GoPro footage from that hold...)

Will be interesting to see how Ondra does in WC events - but going on this performance, he's possibly not as big a threat as envisaged. The Russian team seem off their game too.

I think the Men's finals arguably suffered due to the difficulty of the semis, meaning it was possibly a bit of a crap-shoot as to who qualified and so some (possibly) better climbers missed the cut - but then everyone had the same routes, so it's nothing to do with "fairness", but part of me thought some of the more usual finalists might have made for a tighter final.

Psyched for Vail though - wonder if Pete Ward's available for commentary...

[Pako]

A third Vail win by Sharafutdinov would be incredible...

[r-man]

Will be interesting to see how Ondra does in WC events - but going on this performance, he's possibly not as big a threat as envisaged. The Russian team seem off their game too.

In the men's comp, it would be incredible if any one person stood out ahead of the rest. Some of the competitors seem to focus almost entirely on comps, so it's amazing that an all rounder like Ondra can do so well.

That said, people talk about how much luck there is involved in getting into male finals since the field is so strong, but really there is a small group who do it regularly. Ondra is one of them. Here is the current top ten according to the rankings right now. A final without any of these names is pretty unusual, and I'm always impressed that despite (or perhaps because of?) the wierd and wacky problems thrown at the competitors, certain climbers make finals again and again.


Rank   NAME   Nation   Points
1   HOJER   Jan   GER   419.89
2   GLAIRON MONDET   Guillaume   FRA   352.83
3   SHARAFUTDINOV   Dmitrii   RUS   349.05
4   FISCHHUBER   Kilian   AUT   259.48
5   GELMANOV   Rustam   RUS   232.44
6   KRUDER   Jernej   SLO   231.47
7   MCCOLL   Sean   CAN   217.25
8   BONDER   Jeremy   FRA   183.71
9   ONDRA   Adam   CZE   157.20
10   HORI   Tsukuru   JPN   148.69

[Duma]

On my phone amd can't find the training resource thread, but here will do. Training beta podcast with pooch: https://www.trainingbeta.com/media/tbp-021-alex-puccio/

[Fiend]

Julia stuck her tongue out nicely after F4, that's all that counts.

Pretty interesting finals, shoddy camera-work aside. I thought the commentary was fine as usual, Shauna did a great job of describing the problems in detail.

F4 was disappointing, as was the lack of dynoing to a hand-fist stack in M4. I thought it was interesting to see Ondra try to work a way to static M4, must be the route climber in him. The two fairly symmetrical problems were not as fun to watch as I hoped.

As for the bowl of water, FFS, I'd climb at least half a grade harder if I had skin that needed fucking dampening!!

[r-man]

Onbouldering.com write up http://onbouldering.com/european-bouldering-championships-2015-aftermath/

Bjorn's notes
http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/item.php?id=69731

[Dmitry] wasn't too happy with the setting. "It's only, jumps, jumps, jumps. This is bad for me."
...
He wasn't very optimistic about his chances in the semi final though. "More jumps. I know it.".

[Durbs]

Popcorn at the ready :D

I can't wait to see how Pooch does - see if the training pays off...  Likewise Sean seems to have been training a LOT this year (though not specifically bouldering).

[Duma]

If I'm reading the results right, seems Jan Hojer is out at the qualifying stage. Jorg Verhoven, James Kassay and Dave barrans also look to be out.

[Duma]

Can anyone get the girls results? Website and app seem to be down amd nothing posted on fb

[Pako]

The qualifiers results on the IFSC page seem to only show the results from group 1. Sean McColl said he is in finals on his fb, and he doesn't appear at all in group 1, so I assume they just haven't put up results for the other qualifier groups.

[Duma]

Mens qualification probs

Pako, I can see mens results on the app, Sean is through.

[GraemeA]

The IFSC server crashed not long after the women started climbing so only a few results were showing. It is now working again so the 2 IFSC Judges are now inputting all of the women's scores so the Start Lists will be ready in the morning. (11.20pm here in Canadialand)

I sent Iain Mackenzie photos of the female results (or at least the top half of each group) earlier, they are on his Facebook https://www.facebook.com/iain.mckenzie.315

We had to go old skool and use an old Excel results sheet.

[Duma]

Cheers Graeme, think you can only see the pics if you're friends on fb though.