[petejh]

Can we get back on topic and deal with some actual real-life data instead of half-baked opinion. All this negative bullshit and presuming to have an insight into what other people find inspiring (or should find inspiring) is just that, bullshit, and has nothing to do with the question.
GME's premise for the debate is that the UK sport-climbing scene has relatively low expectations of its top-performers (in sport climbing) cf. other nations, and that this is holding back standards to some degree. The data is key to showing if GME's premise holds any water.

So, what standard are we talking about: 9a+.
How many brits have climbed 9a+: 1 person.
And how many people from other nations have climbed 9a+:
Germany 7.
US 10.
Argentina 1.
Austria 2.
Korea 1.
Spain 9.
France 5.
Italy 2.
Japan 1.
Norway 1.
Russia 1.
Switzerland 1.
Czech Republic 1.

Source: http://escalade9.wifeo.com/par-nationalite.php  No split grades included (including split 9a/+ grades significantly increases the numbers for lots of other nations, but not for the UK). Gaskins isn't included - no dodgy data!

Then, also compare the figures for 9a. (it paints a different picture to above)
And compare the figures for females who've climbed 9a+, 9a and 8c+.

Then, the next step is look at how those other nation's circumstances compare to ours.

Do all that, present the data in a clear format and we can have a well-informed debate.

Slackline, we need you, come back all is forgiven!

[Oldmanmatt]

Well, that would be misleading.
For a start, you'd have to lump all of the European countries together to compare them with the US.
And then wonder why so few Yanks are making the grade?

[petejh]

And while we're on the subject of underacheiving - Stu, not being able to even get down the grass bank to get to the start of the Diamond hand-line is taking the underachievement biscuit. No Fiend - you do not need a boat to climb on the Diamond and nobody has done since 2009, but don't let the truth get in the way of a good prejudice 

[petejh]

Well, that would be misleading.
For a start, you'd have to lump all of the European countries together to compare them with the US.
And then wonder why so few Yanks are making the grade?

Oh ffs, someone just do the math.

[joel182]

Can we get back on topic and deal with some actual real-life data instead of half-baked opinion. All this negative bullshit and presuming to have an insight into what other people find inspiring (or should find inspiring) is just that, bullshit, and has nothing to do with the question.
GME's premise for the debate is that the UK sport-climbing scene has relatively low expectations of its top-performers (in sport climbing) cf. other nations, and that this is holding back standards to some degree. The data is key to showing if GME's premise holds any water.

So, what standard are we talking about: 9a+.
How many brits have climbed 9a+: 1 person.
And how many people from other nations have climbed 9a+:
Germany 7.
US 10.
Argentina 1.
Austria 2.
Korea 1.
Spain 9.
France 5.
Italy 2.
Japan 1.
Norway 1.
Russia 1.
Switzerland 1.
Czech Republic 1.

Source: http://escalade9.wifeo.com/par-nationalite.php  No split grades included (including split 9a/+ grades significantly increases the numbers for lots of other nations, but not for the UK). Gaskins isn't included - no dodgy data!

Then, also compare the figures for 9a. (it paints a different picture to above)
And compare the figures for females who've climbed 9a+, 9a and 8c+.

Then, the next step is look at how those other nation's circumstances compare to ours.

Do all that, present the data in a clear format and we can have a well-informed debate.

Slackline, we need you, come back all is forgiven!

I think it would be interesting to get something that accounts for population/climbing population. The UK has pretty good stats on how many people participate in climbing - wonder what it's like for other countries?

[Somebody's Fool]

If you want to continue enjoying this thread while driving, listen to Robbie Savage and Danny Mills discussing the England football team on 5live. And whenever they say the word 'football' simply exchange it with the word 'climbing.' 

[petejh]

Which one's the trad zealot?

Danny Mills is my guess.

[Muenchener]

Can we get back on topic and deal with some actual real-life data instead of half-baked opinion. All this negative bullshit and And how many people from other nations have climbed 9a+:
Germany 7.
Spain 9.
France 5.

Here's something else that occurs to me as maybe worth measuring:

Five of the seven Germans climbed 9a+ in Germany and/or within an hour's drive of where they live. Only two followed the "just go and climb friendlier hard routes somewhere else then" plan.

The French all did theirs in France. The Spaniards all in Spain.

Being able to pursue your project from the comfort of you own living room may affect the probability of success after all.

[Bonjoy]

Germany has quite a lot of 9a+ climbs I believe, which are in their own way friendly, especially if you climb and train a lot on pockets.

[gme]

Germany without doubt has more grade 9s than we do by a good margin. However all of the other points that have been made about British routes such as weather, conditions, specialized, uninspiring (to some) could be directed at them.

So yes it obviously makes it easier to climb 9a if its on your doorstep but having to travel should not be seen as an barrier to success. I have not got time to go through the whole list but i would suggest that a fair amount of climbers will have done there hardest routes away from home.

[Muenchener]

Not as many as you might think. Only two on 8a.nu, four if you prefer to believe Markus Bock's website. 

Increasingly relatively rapidly as such things go, as Alex Megos works his way through Markus Bock's stash of unfinished projects.

Plus that French site has Alex Huber's Om as "only" 9a/+ and in Austria, but I'm pretty sure it's actually in Germany.

[Johnny Brown]

Wtf jb why the massive personal attack

Tit for tat Gav.

You've ignored or dismissed a lot of sensible points on this thread. It's tedious 'discussing' something with a brick wall with tunnel vision. I don't have a problem with sport climbing, it's my least favourite form of my favourite activity. I still do a fair bit of it. How much trad or winter or alpine do you do?

I am genuinely interested (as are others) as to why you don't think Ben and Jerry were outliers. No response. Whether they were or not, why no hotpot effect? Genuine question, dismissed. Sellers, Smith, aren't these exactly the sort of under-performers you're talking about?

I don't agree the UK under performs at climbing. You are ignorant of our high performance in other disciplines and then make random comparisons to other countries. Did you know Poland dominated high altitude mountaineering for many years? Did you know London walls are full of Polish climbing mutants? Did you know Japan produced Yuji, perhaps the closest thing Jerry had to a successor as a winner in every discipline? Did you know the Japanese have been the most radical exponents of single-push alpine style in the last ten years? Did you know that most of the best mountaineers in the world also climb hard on bolts? Have you been to Switzerland, or Canada, or France or Spain? We are not the same as them, why should we be better or worse than these countries? How does the Uk so regularly feature in the Piolet d'or when we don't even have a single fucking mountain worthy of the term? How is it we have the best female granite climber in the world and the two most accomplished male crack climbers?

I don't agree it is a problem that the best young British climbers don't have a narrow focus on redpointing. I don't agree it's 'a problem' the mags don't push a redpointing agenda. Otherwise we wouldn't have the above. I think it's a fantastic thing that we excel in other disciplines. Yet you construe that as as being negative. WTF?

Others have made plenty of points about why it might or might not be harder to climb hard bolted limestone in Britain. You've dismissed or ignored their points.

The problem with your argument is that it stands on a very wobbly tower of these assumptions. And then it's not a very good argument to boot. Jerry talks in his book about getting in a magazine for the first time and what a massive deal that was for him. If you'd been editor he wouldn't have got in.

Some kids thrive on the carrot, some the stick. You seem obsessed with waving a stick whilst stood on a wobbly tower. Get down before you hurt yourself.

[gme]

I am pretty much going to ignore you as you seem bent on having ago at me rather than a theory i have as to why I think SPORTSCLIMBING in britain is lagging behind the rest of the world.

I have neither claimed to have knowledge of other aspects of climbing or linked them to this argument. In fact i do not know how to put it more clearly that the whole topic is about SPORTSCLIMBING.

I think i am responding to all points raised but am taking my time to try to give a decent answer back. i have not dismissed all the points at all if you read my posts just put an opposite opinion. The only one i really have dismissed is the weather issue as i do think its not true.



The one point you raised that i will respond to is the bit about what you call outliers.

In 95/96 the hardest confirmed grade in the world was 9a (even though action direct was 8c+/9a at the time) There were a hand full (3-4 routes) of this grade and maybe 3-4 people who had climbed them. Pretty similar to today where we have 3 routes at 9b+ and 2 people have climbe that grade.
At this time in the UK we had the following people climbing at that grade or 1 grade less than that grade. ( Equivilent to  9b+ 9b or 9a+ today)
Ben Moon
Jerry Moffat
Malcom Smith
John Gaskins
John Dunne
John Welford
Nic Sellers
Mark Pretty
Neil Carsons
Steve Dunning
Tony Mitchell
Mark Leach
Ian Vickers

Possibles (i cant remember dates)
Robin Barker
Rich Heap
Stevie Haston

So you can see that Moon and Moffatt where far from the exceptions 4 people climbing the hardest grade and potentially 16 people climbing with in 1 full grade of the top.

And to say that Malc and nic under performed at sports climbing when Malc climbed the hardest route in the world at 18 years old and Nics resume was pretty much on par with jerrys shows your lack of knowledge.

I always try to speak to people on these sites in a manner i would in the pub. You obviously dont as if you spoke to me as you have it would not have ended up amicably.

[Fiend]

Fiend - you do not need a boat to climb on the Diamond and nobody has done since 2009, but don't let the truth get in the way of a good prejudice 

I'm not prejudiced you dome (not least because I think North Wales sport limestone is actually worth climbing), from everything I've seen it looks like a very good crag. But, take the boat out of the equation and even then I suspect it's just slightly trickier to access from the road and get in condition than Siurana or Santa Linya??

Also what Muncehauser wrote is pretty damn important.

[petejh]

Trickier to access from the road than Siurana/Santa Linya - yes. But in much better condition in July, August and September than those crags are if you want to climb hard routes.

And miles quicker to access than Ceuse, which is also too hot in July /August.

The conditions argument is a non-starter for me. Ask Pete Robins how many days he's climbed at the Diamond this season (and every season) and how many of those days were ming - you'll get the answer 'about 2 in 10'. That's my experience too - only started climbing again in early September and I've been projecting at the Diamond 6 days so far. Of those 6 days, 1 day has been greasy and the rest have been mint. And that's late Sept/early Oct. In late July  through Aug to early Sept it's better again.

The window will close soon for sure, lucky then that euro crags are just coming into season...

Not specifically aimed at you Fiend (I know you're psyched) but as usual, high psyche and actual experience trump pessimism and hearsay.

[Johnny Brown]

Well thanks Gav I appreciate a considered response. I am really not trying to have a go.

I must admit I didn't realise several of those had climbed 8c+ in 1996. I guess for context though I'd need to know how many French/ Spanish/ Poles etc were at the same level.

What I'm not convinced of is the reality of trying to separate sports climbing. Following the late eighties/ early nineties sport boom the fashion swung back to trad in the late nineties. Worldwide massive advances were made in free climbing big-walls. Several of the world's best sport climbers put their energies in that direction. Likewise bouldering was not seen as proper climbing until the late nineties.

Nowadays we have a more fractured scene; many/ most of our top sport climbers are not exclusively sport climbers, whereas from that list I can only see Heap and possibly Haston who put any effort into freeing big walls - which now takes up big chunks of most top UK climbers' lives, those for instance that Doylo suggest could climb 9 if they wanted. In the UK big trad has more sponsorship potential too than hard sport - I daresay it makes for a more interesting slideshow or article.

You can ignore as irrelevant if you want, but it clearly isn't. Energies are directed elsewhere.

Malc climbed the hardest route in the world at 18 years old and Nics resume was pretty much on par with jerrys shows your lack of knowledge

I'm well aware of what they did. But neither put up the hardest route in the world or were recognised as the best climber in the world. Ben and Jerry did. Hence the suggestion that comparatively, they underperformed. Do you honestly think Malcolm fulfilled his potential post-Hubble?

[Fiend]

JB have a look at some of Malcs 8B/+s at Dumby, they are pretty  Maybe all will be revealed in Chris / Shark's endlessly delayed Malc film...

The conditions argument is a non-starter for me. Ask Pete Robins how many days he's climbed at the Diamond this season (and every season) and how many of those days were ming - you'll get the answer 'about 2 in 10'. That's my experience too - only started climbing again in early September and I've been projecting at the Diamond 6 days so far. Of those 6 days, 1 day has been greasy and the rest have been mint. And that's late Sept/early Oct. In late July  through Aug to early Sept it's better again.

That might be something to do with having the nouse to go down on the right days, rather than the number of "right days" being extremely large. I've only been rained off the North / West of Scotland once out of about 12-15 days up there this year, that doesn't mean it's always in condition...

[Johnny Brown]

Again, I'm well aware of Malc's bouldering. But sport he seems to have lost interest? We are talking sport climbing in isolation remember - loads of our best climbers concentrated on bouldering.

[Fiend]

Sorry yeah I forgot about SPORTCLIMBING. Maybe he just found bouldering at Dumby far more inspiring than British sport climbing?

[gme]

 In the UK big trad has more sponsorship potential too than hard sport - I daresay it makes for a more interesting slideshow or article.

To you maybe but not everyone. There is a new group of keen climbers coming from the walls that have little interest in this and that is who i have been talking about. The media and vociferous parts of the web shout down sports climbing as not real and therefore this effects both the support and where the (limited) sponsorship money goes to. Thus this has the effect of reducing the motivation of the climbers to put the effort into red pointing really hard routes.
If you put to one side personal achievement as a motivational reason(which is always going to be anyone who gets to the tops driving force or they wont get there) can you not see how this could put someone off sacrificing, time, money and effort into training in gym for 12/24/36 months to get to there peak level to do a properly hard route only for the media to report things much easier with the same level of excitement.

For once you seem to be agreeing with me as that was the basis of the whole topic and i agreed trad had effected it in my second post.

And from the little knowledge i have of mountaineering i think the same issue of what and what is newsworthy exist there as well.

[Rocksteady]

Good thread. Seems there are a couple of interlinked questions:

(1) Do the cream of British climbing youth get into sport-climbing as opposed to other climbing disciplines? If not, why not? Is hard British sport climbing seen as uninspiring or are there cultural factors at play - prejudices against sport climbing by early mentors, the Pygmalion effect?

(2) Do the British underperform in sport climbing versus comparable nations in terms of population, funding, climbing participant population? If yes, why? Do we have worse conditions, on the whole, than rival nations? Or do we have a problem with over-hyping early promising performances, leading to the Pygmalion effect and the suppression of ambition? Or are there other reasons, like a British cultural attitude that frowns upon 'trying hard' as opposed to 'just being good'?

I don't know the answer to (1). Personally I'm most into sport climbing and bouldering as I enjoy the nature of these activities more, but I do think the scenery and lines for British trad climbs are way more inspiring than their limestone cousins, on the whole. Depends what each individual is like I think and what motivates them.

As for (2), I don't know what the stats will tell us. I remember in school it was OK/cool to be good at something, but only if you weren't seen to be a 'try hard'. It's the 'talent' vs 'hard work' debate. I think there is an element of British culture where it's OK to have talent, but not to work hard. This is an awful attitude. Not sure it's the same for boys and girls or in all strata of society. I think as a nation/culture we tend to underperform in the big, popular sports - the ones that everyone plays at school - and do OK in more niche sports where it's the passion of the individual that gets them into it in the first place, and drives them on. In the former, people take them up because they have talent, in the latter, people pursue them out of love.

I'd have thought climbing falls into the latter category, so we should have as good a chance as having top performers as any other comparable nation. My 2p.

[Doylo]

To be fair Malc did put up the first Scottish 9a (Hunger) a few years back and those routes he repeated in the mid nineties like Evolution and Progress are regarded as 8c+ now.

[gme]

I'm well aware of what they did. But neither put up the hardest route in the world or were recognised as the best climber in the world. Ben and Jerry did. Hence the suggestion that comparatively, they underperformed. Do you honestly think Malcolm fulfilled his potential post-Hubble?

I don't think malc reached his potential post hubble. He did do the 1st ascent of Scotlands only 9a however and probably still one of the fastest british ascents of an 8c, but yes i think he could have done harder. Like a lot of people he got into bouldering during its boom in the late 90s put up some of our hardest boulder problems including a couple of traverses that were among the hardest bits of climbing in the world at the time and repeated what was at the time the hardest boulder problem in the world. So he did go on from Hubble.

I have also not suggested that being 1/2 or 1 grade behind the best in the world is under performing. If we had a bunch of climbers at Steves level in the UK this conversation wouldn't even be happening. But then i also suspect that we wouldn't be seeing news at the levels we do now either.

[IanP]

The one point you raised that i will respond to is the bit about what you call outliers.

In 95/96 the hardest confirmed grade in the world was 9a (even though action direct was 8c+/9a at the time) There were a hand full (3-4 routes) of this grade and maybe 3-4 people who had climbed them. Pretty similar to today where we have 3 routes at 9b+ and 2 people have climbe that grade.
At this time in the UK we had the following people climbing at that grade or 1 grade less than that grade. ( Equivilent to  9b+ 9b or 9a+ today.

Not sure you're equivalence is too good since the current top sports routes are heavily dominated by only 2 climbers.  As far as I know as well as being the only people to have done 9b+ Ondra and Sharma are the only confirmed ascents of proper 9b routes (as opposed to boulder / route link ups).   If you drop the grades to 9b, 9a+, 9a the comparison of with the 90s doesn't look quite so bad, though I still would agree that we dropped in the 'world rankings' for sport climbing.

[Sloper]

I'll declare my position before I go on.

In my view sports climbing is shit, it's boring, tedious and not really climbing at all.  ohh and its overhyped and over graded too. (I haven't had a punter point for a while and I'm getting withdrawal symptoms).

Anyway, the point is why should sports climbing as GME seems to indicate be seen as an area where there is a need to 'compete' at all and does it matter that there are too few (if indeed there are) British climbers at the elite level.

In simple terms it doesn't matter at all.

Even if I'm wrong and it does matter greatly of all the factors that are likely to reduce the number of climbers from the nominal level to the actual level I would suggest that the 'pygmalion effect', the climbing media and so on are almost certain to be trivial beside the major factors which are, the number of hard climbs, their accessability, weather and other factors.

If you have 3 9as then you could find them all don't suit your style, if you have 100 then the chances are a few willl and therefore you'll become a '9a climber'.

If you can work a 9a 10/20 minutes away from your house your chances of success must be higher than if you have to travel from Sheffield to LPT, Malham etc.

Right off to be a bastard.