simpson vanishes...

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Firstly what is wrong with asking a few questions? Sponsors should be the first to do this, if you sponsor a liar your company looks a bit shit.
Percy has got a bit off a barracking here of people that are uniformed and speaking purely out of the confidence of ignorance (obviously the likes of Doyle couldn't be better informed really).

So Action, I've belayed a few people on this route now for a long time (last 3 years). And have seen alot of people on it first hand (Felix knaub, Manuel Brunn (sp?) Fabi, jonas baumann, Andre (strong polish peast)). I was even lucky enough to be there when Adam pustelnik did it.
From belaying Ben and Ryan on it i have seen them both do bigger links than simpson in obsession, with Ryan doing it in 2 save for the clip in the middle (which was often wet) And Ben almost doing it in 2 around the mono. Both of them looked as solid if not more solid than simpson when they were on it. And Pustelnik looked a whole other level above that (total legend), infact his warm up involved doing the route in 2 like it was pretty easy. Watching pustelnik on the route was amazing seeing how hard he had to try. Manuel Brunn is also able to lap the route save for the initial jump (simpsons sequence is whack only windisch uses one similar and he hasn't done it yet (even though I've seen Windisch do moves i could only dream of)) If Ryan or Ben had snuck out on me when i had been belaying them alot i'd feel a bit miffed, but then they didn't because they're mates, they'd certainly have told me the name and where abouts of who bleayed them. And like i say both got very close but didn't do it. (i can go on about Jonas being a beast on it etc but i hope my point is made.

Edited footage is just that 8b climbers can do all the moves on this route (i know a few) and leaving your mates on the day of your ascent when they are there making a film about you climbing it (whilst youve been falling off the route ALOT and making alot of audible excuses in previous days) and when you havent been that close (or even had a half decent redpoint from the floor) i saw felix fall on the last moves and he hasnt done it yet).

Adding all that up on the worlds most famous route is it not ok to say, hey rich can you name your belayer (preferably someone of sound mind and body who is known to other climbers) and let your company get in touch, especially when your photo is in the guide book on it.

Ditto for Liquid, Hubble, Ascents in Buoux (i have aussie mates who were on this trip who have previously expressed similar doubts and disappointment for not being with rich on the day of the send.

As for his grit ascents they were pretty fast and ground breaking in style. I can see why no one would be there (not like you need a belayer on careless) but why claim to have a video of things like careless and not show it? (its enough of a ball ache to turn your camera on and off repeatedly, so if you have footage you'd show someone)

I used to fully believe rich and be a big fan (he was almost up there with malc mcclure and gaskins etc) then he started claiming things like a sub 4 min mile and sub 2.30 marathon. I flat out think this is bollocks. My unkle mike is a semi professional runner (profile here http://www.thepowerof10.info/athletes/profile.aspx?athleteid=3835) whilst his power of 10 is incomplete you can see he's pretty fast for an old man. in his hayday he could run sub 2.30 marathons. I know how much training he does and how skinny and light he is. To say you've done these things in running and have no proof (UKC thread on this was genius) whilst spelling the name of the stadium wrong where you supposedly ran your 4 minute mile in IN A RACE and having no record is taking the fucking piss. Runners dont stand for that, they have Omega timing and results for a reason. Science.

In climbing we just have rosey eyed faith. I don't know enough about boxing to comment (so i wont) and if you put huber under the brandler hasse ropeless after practice and simpson with a rope (slower!) after doing the route once, and told me to put 400 quid on who'd top out first i know who i'd back.

I'm happy to believe his climbing claims with a bit of proof, it'd take a lot of proof for the running ones (like an offical results sheet from an independent party with his name and time on, god they're hard to come by arent they after you've raced!!), 10 years of watching my uncle in local and national races has taught me that much.

Doing your a levels isn't that hard chris! my sister got 4A/ stars (and a B in an extra one) and went to cambridge and got a first (you could say she was pretty motivated) but she struggles to do a 10km under 50minutes with her little wobble legs (she can hang a 15mm campus rung nay bother but she doesn't claim to have climbed the worlds most famous route without a credible witness) basically its unrelated, Its an awesome effort getting into top level academia but it is a world away from professional sporting claims.

I know several climbers who make rich look weak on a board, especially Leo when he's on top form :), and even on pockets. people have done 1 armers off 1 pad monos infront of my friends eyes. but they haven't claimed an unbelievable (no pun intended) polysport ticklist ever amassed without a single bit of uncut footage or definite belayers on the actual ascent.

Its a bit disrespectful to top end climbers and peers (especially in the running world) to say you are above questioning (aka a scientific mind) and that you must have Faith and faith alone. Only in climbing can you do this and i'd like to be one who asks for some proof. In a nice way.

(if anyone wants to seriously question any of my ascents btw feel free, just state the climb and ascent style i've claimed)
I did unfamiliar ground up last weekend in really thick mist so you couldnt film, no video just photos, oh fuck ryan pasquill belayed me and nige kershaw was there. Err i did queen kong with no witnesses 5.5 years ago after recovering from pneumonia (pretty unlikely!!) oh fuck i went back 2 days later and did it with springer and got a full vid for the county.

ok enough. if you dont know all the names on that action list consider yourself fairly uninformed about the route and its recent history.

i'd prefer to be hustled and humiliated than lied too.

Good effort to scarpa and wild country for DOING THEIR JOB and trying to make sure they're credible.

Cheers Dan Varian.
 
Pinky perky is my 2nd fave psyche video ever, after splinter..

But that might just be because its YouTube suggestions list introduced me to Zuzana in "Hardest Pushups Ever" :) my psyche got a little distracted after that..
 
I have to say Dan your A levels comment comes across as nothing short of ignorant
 
Don't want to distract too much from the biatching, but I think we have a lot to learn from Zuzana - For instance "Dive Bomber Pushups" must do more for your core than yoga...
 
carlisle slapper said:
I know several climbers who make rich look weak on a board, especially Leo when he's on top form :), and even on pockets. people have done 1 armers off 1 pad monos infront of my friends eyes. but they haven't claimed an unbelievable (no pun intended) polysport ticklist ever amassed without a single bit of uncut footage or definite belayers on the actual ascent.

I aint no board beast but rich is the most impressive guy i have seen on a board! he was down at the mill and had not climbed for 6months and was flashing all the hard projects and making them look piss. Maybe some stuff that he says seen far fetched but he is a very motivated guy and very driven to achieve.

Ioan Doyle
 
Cheers paul, I thought it was pretty flippant to use A levels and university entry acceptance to cambridge as evidence of being able to run a sub 4 minute mile, climb 9a and a reason for full blown sponsorship.
As a phd student yourself i'm sure your aware of evidence in context and relevant citations, apologies if i offended you. It was a first hand real life example used to illustrate a point, hundreds of people go to top flight universities every year. Barely anyone officially runs under 4minute miles without proof.

Clearly "Its an awesome effort getting into top level academia" wasn't being nice enough. If Stu tried to claim a ground up ascent of careless and used his university professor status as proof of ambition/ capability you'd think it a little strange. even though that took many more years of hard graft than his A levels ever did. There are alot of climbers on here who have awesome academic CVs my point is, is that it has nothing inherently to do with sporting ability, look at chris eubank. Or Hawking on the vice versa.

How else could i make that point without taking up a massive amount of page space?
 
How many people leave school with no qualifications then years later teach themselves a levels in a library get straight a s then get into cambridge? I wasn t trying to make a big thing about it but was merely trying to show that he s a driven guy. Thats all. Anyway i ve got nought else to add, im away and my phones shit for internet. I ll leave the sheffield maffia to it....
 
No wonder more and more people don't publicize there achievements! Seems a real shame there is so much negativity and disbelief in climbing!
 
I'm intrigued by this shit-show, even more so because I climbed with Rich a couple of months ago and would be quite dismayed to find out he was lying about all those achievements I admired. He wanted to do some drytooling to train for his plan of trying to do speed ascents of the 6 classic N.Faces in the alps so I arranged to meet up for a climb. He told me about his 2.30 solo of the Brandler-Hasse and also told me how he doesn't climb hard any more but 'keeps his eye in' by doing one F8c per year which he's managed for 'the last few years'. I'd put him in the same category as a few other driven people I've met or spent time with, he was obviously highly charged and good company. He didn't particularly impress with his climbing on the tools - even Jack Geldard o/s'd the route that Rich didn't quite get so it can't be that hard ;) But that doesn't mean he was/isn't a beast on the rock, however it did surprise me.

After reading this thread and the stuff on the ukc 4 minute mile thing, and seeing the clips of Rich performing various feats of indoor beastliness, the main thing that seems obvious to me is to just compare the evidence of Rich's claims against the evidence of the other climbers operating at the same level - I've never seen any clips of Ste Mac doing loads of one armers or crazy hard school-room stuff like that but he somehow manages to knock out 9a+'s. Same goes for Dave Mac, Birkett (if we're talking about people capable of E9 onsights). Never seen footage of Sharma doing any of that indoor stuff either but I'm probably wrong. Don't remember seeing Pete R doing loads of one armers and mono pullups, just immense dedication, hard work and application. Which says to me that one armers and mono pull-ups aren't a pre-requisite for climbing F8c+ and even F9a+ sport routes.
Which climbers at the same level haven't been able to have a belayer or witness to verify ascents of Liquid Ambar, Hubble, Action Directe, (other foriegn 8c/+ routes), first ever O/S of an E8 or E9, 2.30hr solo of Brandler-Hasse, for their sponsors if no-one else.
Add to that a sub 4 minute mile, sub 2.30 marathon, 16 undefeated fights (not in the same league but it most certainly would be recorded and verifiable unless Rich is into bare knuckle for cash).
The last point I'm reminded about from our day climbing is that Rich said he was on the British Olympic boxing team for the 2012 London olympics, and that unfortunately he didn't make the final cut because he had to have an operation. This must be verifiable with Sport England etc and would go some way to proving or disproving his knockers.

I hope he's the real deal :please:
 
Percy B said:
His recent blog posts had ascents on them that a lot of people found hard to believe (these blogs have all now been removed unfortunately) but included achievements such as rope-soloing the Brandler-Hasse in the Dolomites in well under 2 hours. I think Alex Huber took 4 hours 20 minutes to free solo this route - unsuprising as it is one of the loosest 16 pitch complex limestone E5's you will find anywhere.

The scarpa blog is still there:

http://www.scarpa.co.uk/team/blogs.asp?TeamID=40

Maybe Simpson eliminated the nap? (around 1'30"):

adidas Outdoor Alexander Huber - Free Solo (Hasse BrandlerVIII+)
 
Few thoughts on this saga:

Firstly as someone who's clearly not daft and been in the game long enough to know better, I'm amazed that Rich has allowed himself to get into the position of seemingly not having anything evidenceable, especially given his track record of publicly calling bullshit on Heason. Whatever you can read into having met the Rich, or what a mate of a mate might have told you down the pub, or however many pullups he can do, or that he probably was strong enough to do XXX route, or that he's driven enough to be a self-made academic, I think the fact that sponsors have dropped him is a real eyeopener. When you look at people who've had questions asked about them in the past none of them (to my knowledge) got dropped as a result.

It does surprise me (as in I wasn't aware) if its true that nobody has seen him do the routes he's said he has, there must have been belayers, and even if they'd been sworn to secrecy (why?) you'd think someone would pipe up to save the guy's reputation. The person rumoured to have been the belayer on his unreported hard grit routes for example should be able to shed some light on this. Of course its not the case that everyone needs to be videoing everything they do, but when you're talking ascents thaat are either garnering sponsorship beans, or column inches, or that are of top-level significance then I think in todays world there aught to be hard evidence, or at the very least the climbing being able to put themselves in the context of being above suspicion.

I'm glad that this thread hasn't descended into the usual "well I met him once and he seemed like a nice guy, didn't have horns or a forked tail thus he can't be a liar" crap like we had with heason and scotty, so thanks to everyone for being rational.

Would anyone care to fill me in on the edited highlights of the boxing/athletics shit cos I ain't seen the stuff on CT?

I must admit it doesn't look good for Rich at this stage, even if he could beat this shit out of me, lap me on the track and has got more UCAS points than me.
 
dave said:
I must admit it doesn't look good for Rich at this stage, even if he could beat this shit out of me, lap me on the track and has got more UCAS points than me.

Yes, but he doesnt have dave in blue does he! eh!
 
Cheers Dan, Percy and Chris for clarifying some of this.

Dan I agree that Sponsors should check for evidence for there athletes achievements.

However why did Wild Country and Scarpa choose to sponsor him if there was so much doubt about his credentials? Why the sudden change of heart as from what you and Percy are saying there was no evidence before and there is no evidence now. From an outside perspective none of this makes any sense.

I don't think they (his sponsors) have handled this well at all, although clearly simpson has himself to blame for refusing to, or not being able to produce evidence for a lot of his claims. If they thought he was for real before and now they think he's a liar they should really explain the reason for the U-Turn

All things considered though I think from what I've heard heard I'm still inclined to believe he's for real. There's a common theme coming from
people who know the guy and that is that he is strong enough to do what he's said and that he is someone of integrity.

There's not much footage either of the likes of Malcolm smith, john gaskins, Stevie Haston (not to single these guys out) etc. floating around but no one (and certainly not me either) is questioning them. I just don't understand why Simpson is different and getting such grief by comparison.
The likes of McClure, Macleod, pearson etc. have pretty much all their hard stuff on video but this is not the case for a lot of other climbers.

Also another reason why I'm enclined to believe him is that he has provided so much detail and photos for this stuff in magazines blogs etc.

If he's lying he must be the most elaborate liar in climbing history. Why would he boast about fake boxing and running credentials in the climbing media? Why head out to the Frankenjura and spain numerous times before pretending to do these routes? As Doyle said why train so hard to get strong only to claim to do these old school routes for which he got so little reward or publicity?
 
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