[Duma]

both 3/4 now, jule leading on bonus attempts...

[Duma]

balls. anna pulled it out of the bag on W4, and jule and shauna couldn't top.

1. anna
2. shauna
3. jule

[GraemeA]

Nice work Percy. Best sets yet 

[tunaficiency]

Shauna 2nd overall now. Gutted had a migraine and missed it 

[Duma]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but:
there's only one more round this year - Munich in late September (too big a gap surely?),
the best 5 scores from the 6 rounds are used to calc overall winner,

then...

given the scores here,

Anna's already won it?

(Shauna trails by 46 but can only improve by a max of 45
Akiyo trails by 71 but can only improve by a max of 69)

[Johnny Brown]

43rd. Way to go G!

[fatneck]

Anna's already won it?

Looks like it, but it's still been an awesome first series for Shauna and bodes incredibly well for next year! When she'll be the ripe old age of 20 

[Nibile]

and after all, there's "losing" and "losing to Anna Stohr"...
great season for Shauna, would be nice to finish it off with a win!!! 

[Adam Lincoln]

Pretty certain Anna doesn't even have to compete in the last event to win it. Amazing effort by Shauna though.

[r-man]

Just watched it. Entertaining stuff.

...Handjamming in a bouldering comp? Here's what the competitors think...

To watch someone absolutely crush the first 3 boulders and to get shut down by what boulderers would call a “party trick” is hard to watch. After 3-4 tries, I realized he was probably not going to do the problem. Kilian who was beside me felt the same. He said to me “I don’t want to win like this”… and it’s true. Even though I knew I’d come second instead of third, it wasn’t in the way I wanted.

http://seanmccoll.com/

[Grubes]

To watch someone absolutely crush the first 3 boulders and to get shut down by what boulderers would call a “party trick” is hard to watch. After 3-4 tries, I realized he was probably not going to do the problem. Kilian who was beside me felt the same. He said to me “I don’t want to win like this”… and it’s true. Even though I knew I’d come second instead of third, it wasn’t in the way I wanted.

http://seanmccoll.com/

Just seen this in the comment section ..

Hey thanks for the write up! I was wondering if you could enlighten us to the fact that the announcers said that Jan had been practicing hand jams the day before. Is there any chance he was tipped off to the final problem or perhaps all the problems… Is there any cheating in the competition world?
Cheers
Matt

So is percy open to bribes?

[Johnny Brown]

Probably no more than knowing the route setter in question has a reputation for setting jamming problems.

[erm, sam]

I seem to remember Rei and somebody else did the prob without handjamming, and the jam slots had lots of handy thumb scollops near the edge so I don't think they were do or die jam cracks anyway..

[LucyB]

Ok, so I am biased on this topic....

Surely a climbing competition should encompass all styles of climbing? The IFSC has quite strict guidelines about what should and shouldn't be included. (The mighty JG did get into a spot of bother recently over the inclusion of a non-approved sequence).

Hand-jamming, although not found often on boulder problems, is most definitely a style of climbing. It gets the comp away from the 'who can pull hardest on the smallest holds' feel, which for me is a good thing. As Sam pointed out, there did seem to be other ways of doing it, and for those competitors who are more familiar with Percy's style of setting and were able to practice, that just goes with the territory of being a more experienced comp climber.

And just about everyone agreed it was one of the best sets, with almost perfect splitting of the competitors and a nail-biting finale that was great to watch in both men's and women's.

_{I was very, very proud of him and have almost forgiven him for abandoning me for 12 days with 2 small children that don't sleep}

[Muenchener]

Hand-jamming, although not found often on boulder problems, is most definitely a style of climbing. It gets the comp away from the 'who can pull hardest on the smallest holds' feel, which for me is a good thing. As Sam pointed out, there did seem to be other ways of doing it, and for those competitors who are more familiar with Percy's style of setting and were able to practice, that just goes with the territory of being a more experienced comp climber.

  How is a handjam a f*cking "party trick"? Kids these days etc.

[erm, sam]

I think he specifically ment a handjam on a (presumably comp) boulder problem rather than handjams per se.

[slackline]

I think he specifically ment a handjam on a (presumably comp) boulder problem rather than handjams per se.

And? 

Should drop knees not be allowed 'cause they're "tricks" that make it "easier" to do certain moves?

Its a comp not The School.

[erm, sam]

Of course drop knees should be banned. And heels.

[slackline]

 

I don't see why, just because its a competition boulder problem, hand jams shouldn't be included, they're perfectly valid climbing techniques, or more simply....what LucyA said.

[namnok]

_{I was very, very proud of him and have almost forgiven him for abandoning me for 12 days with 2 small children that don't sleep}

I see he's been keeping busy with the local 5-0

[erm, sam]

I am not disagreeing with you, I just thought Seans comment was probably not about all handjams as was implied by Muenchener, but more likely about a narrower subset of handjams..

[slackline]

Ah ok, my misunderstanding. 

[GraemeA]

To watch someone absolutely crush the first 3 boulders and to get shut down by what boulderers would call a “party trick” is hard to watch. After 3-4 tries, I realized he was probably not going to do the problem. Kilian who was beside me felt the same. He said to me “I don’t want to win like this”… and it’s true. Even though I knew I’d come second instead of third, it wasn’t in the way I wanted.

http://seanmccoll.com/

Just seen this in the comment section ..

Hey thanks for the write up! I was wondering if you could enlighten us to the fact that the announcers said that Jan had been practicing hand jams the day before. Is there any chance he was tipped off to the final problem or perhaps all the problems… Is there any cheating in the competition world?
Cheers
Matt

So is percy open to bribes?

Percy had put a hand jam on the warm up wall. This was spotted by the Germans (and maybe others) so they figured there would be a jam or 2 in the semis or the finals. Jan spent the evening trying to learn how to jam by watching YouTube - obviously not the most effiecient way to learn.

So no, no cheating was going on. And yes Percy is obviously open to bribes but these days he is quite expensive 

[Percy B]

In fact, as the chief route setter, part of my job is to make sure that there are appropriate holds on the warm-up wall. If I am expecting the climbers to pull on small crimps, I have to put the same style of small crimps on the warm-up wall - if the comp has problems on pockets, I make sure that the competitors have pockets to warm-up on too. And if I have set a problem that requires the climbers to pull on a bomber, perfectly parallel hand jam, then I put one of these on the warm-up wall. Its not cheating - its common sense,

The fact that many comp climbers have never tried this most elementary of climbing skills is (to me) quite amusing, and as I have a pretty twisted sense of humour, I like to include the odd jam now and again just emphasise the point that it is a climbing competition - an event designed to test climbers skills to find the person who is best at climbing in all styles - slabs, roofs, crimps, pockets, and even cracks.

As I got the chance to set a boulder comp in the country with probably more hand jams per route than any other country in the world, I thought it would be a nice touch to include it in the comp. The problem was possible without jamming (and was done this way by two other guys), but it was just a V10 instead of a V9. Sean McColl will simply have to go on my list of climbers who don't get it. His inference that the ability to hand jam is merely a party trick is almost as sad as Matteus Mullers comment that 'Jamming isn't climbing" which he made in a world cup at Birmingham a few years back.

As for the poor German fella, he just shot his bolt on the first three blocs and had nothing left to do the last one, jams or no jams. I understand that Killi and Sean like to fight to win rather than have the leader hand them the victory because he gets shut down, but if you're not there to win any which way, then what's the deal?
Killi certainly seemed to have forgotten how sad it all was in the pub later on! 

[Percy B]

Highlights here, from Udo