[joel182]

As far as I understand, its the latter - the top 20 from the individual qualifications will go through to a combined final.

Then the top 8 in the combined final will qualify for the olympics.

[HaeMeS]

IFSC: "The best 20 climbers out of the 172 competing in Bouldering, Lead and Speed will fight in the Combined during the final three days of the World Championships. Seven of the highest placed athletes per gender, with a maximum of 2 per country will qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games. "

[abarro81]

Makes sense, though you could end up with some weird situations e.g. where someone could win the Bouldering, Lead and Speed world champs but then end up 20th in the overall..

[robertostallioni]

Their are 3 comps providing a direct qualification route to Tokyo, not including a"wild card" slot and some countries will have more than 2 athletes qualifying. The national governing bodies will then select their favourite 2 of each gender even though more athletes might have "qualified".


probably realistically only an issue for the Slovs/Japs.

more accurate description would prob be

"will qualify for consideration by their national governing body for selection as one of the top 2 athletes by gender for selection to the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games."

[finbarrr]

so, i just sat through the world championships boulder finals.
(and watched most of the female semi finals.)
won't share who won, but some of the stats, so i'll will hide my thoughts

NSFW  :

to start with a positive note, the best climbers won.
will i tell anyone to go and watch this comp? no.
the split fields (men and women competing separately) is just soo long
and when the comp is  (too) hard there is so little succesful climbing.

we have commented on the earlier comps this year when the semi's were hard that the finals were set for show. now the semi's were hard and the finals were harder for the men and similar for the women..
total of 7 tops for the women' semi's (2 hours) and 9 tops in the women's final (=/- 2 hours)
for the mens there were 16 tops in the semi's and 2 in the finals!!

i can only imagine the discussion going on behind the scenes; "this can't happen when we showcase the combined event for the olympic people"

then a thought on the boulders themselves: women's semi's were hard, just hard enough for janja
they looked like hard climbing.
women's finals had three boulders that were low percentage moves that looked alright when completed, sadly that wasn't very often. leading to the occasional 20 minutes of no moves being done...

have not seen the men's semi's yet.
men's finals were just a bit too hard. i know it's a fine line, but they obviously crossed the line.

also, with these hard and dynamic boulders many climbers were looking at their skin (even Ondra!!!) and having to climb with tape on their tips.
these same climbers will have to climb lead tomorrow, and the day after , then speed, then the combined ....

[abarro81]

Currently half way through the men's final.. thus far it's kinda crap. Too hard and lame running jump start bollocks. I thought they banned that shit? They should do... Also lame that skin seems such an issue. Given that they're not actually doing that many boulders the volumes must be sharp as hell to be a big issue like that.. can't they break them in first so that this isn't such a big problem?

[Danny]

I don't even have the "it's not real climbing" complaint about the n-generation sideways mega dynos, I just think that it's not entertaining to watch a solid half hour of everyone failing 2 seconds after pulling on. This seems to happen quite often for these problems.   

[Fiend]

Agreed. Up until Jakob on M2 it was looking pretty promising, and overall it was a pleasure to watch Tamoa-Style (tm), but it was a disappointing watch overall.

I think it was a mixture of the difficulty and the constant amount of low-percentage dyno / coordination moves - moves that were a frustrating entry barrier to what looked like some very interesting challenges above. The top of M1 was cool, and I really wanted to see how the tops of M2 and M4 were done, but there was too much luck with "catches" involved even to get there.

I do also agree that there seems to be an increasing emphasis on those sorts of climbing - at least there wasn't too much running triple parkour jump stuff, but I thought were might be over the hump of "coordination" style. I don't think anyone wants to see 4 versions of 30 degree board climbing, equally we don't want 4 versions of random luck-based bored climbing...

Oh, the women's, I can't remember much except again there were two very similar sideways things, and Shauna on the steep one was amazing.

[Fiend]

Further, obviously setters want to put in interesting technical challenges and stuff that will look good to the (non-climbing?) audience - I think a better solution than too much coordination style would be to have better / more use of wall features: aretes, grooves, prows, overlaps, roof lips, changes of angles. Features where you can put in moves that looks crazy / unfeasible to the audience but are do-able because of the angles involved, and where the technical challenge is more about technique and working the subtleties than luck. There was a problem a few years ago (warning, uselessly vague recollection incoming), possibly in a Chinese final, that was up a vague prow - small salmon holds into larger salmon slopers. I think a Slovenian guy was the only person to do it, and it looked straight out of Font - precarious, techy, applied burl. More of that please.

[wasbeen]

To me it seem the error margin is too high - the results in the men's side in particular are all over the place.  The setters face an almost impossible job to split the field (but not on something arbitrary such as height) whilst still making it entertaining.

The tops/zone scoring throws away a lot of information as does judging it over only 4 boulders.
 
I would be inclined to scrap the semis and have more boulders in the final with only half the field making it through to the last few boulders like they do in Long Jump in the athletics. Award points for each hold on the boulder. With widescreens TV you can have two climbers climbing with split screen to shimmy things on a bit.

In the woman's Janja is basically the best at everything, so will win regardless.

[lemony]

My main takeaway from the Men's final was that if you want to set a low percentage start move, don't do it on P1. Switching on and getting excited for the final, then watching the world's best climber spend 4 minutes barely leaving the mat was a bit of a psyche killer. The youtube stream cut out after P2 and I didn't bother restarting it.

[Durbs]

My theory is it's tied somewhat into the shift away from the 4+ format. You're forced to generate separation via attempts on low-percentage moves, and most (all?) final problems just have a single crux, which once overcome usually means a top.

I'm sure in the "good ol' days" of 4+, you'd often have 2 crux's; one for the zone/bonus, then another to the top, or just a consistently hard,un-relenting problem.
It seems regularly now that you get problems where the top is a given once they've got the zone, or the climbers get neither... I can't think of any recent finals where it's come down to bonuses, though this is partly tied into Janja not leaving much doubt as to the winner.

W4 being a notable exception where it was just solidly burly - the result being it was arguably the most entertaining problem of the final.
Would it be valid/interesting/useful if finals had more of a fixed format? 4 problems, 4 styles; slab, burl, coordination and then "setters' choice".

That being said, hats off to the setters, it must be SO hard to keep coming up with interesting, watchable problems which separate the climbers just the right amount. As I said before, the pressure they'll be under for the Olympics is nuts, but it would be a shame for the world to watch bouldering and think it mostly involves dynamic, parkour moves, and it's lead that has "proper climbing".

Lastly, genuine question - does Janja have a weakness, and if so - what is it?

[Fiend]

My theory is it's tied somewhat into the shift away from the 4+ format. You're forced to generate separation via attempts on low-percentage moves, and most (all?) final problems just have a single crux, which once overcome usually means a top.

I agree with the logic of 4. being a problem, but I don't agree with the single crux analysis. One of the pleasures of this years comps is seeing a lot of multi-crux problems, which show a larger amount of interesting climbing. Take the seeming / likely cruxes in the men's this time:
M1 - starting jump (low %) / sideways dyno / flick out into left hold / final match
M2 - dyno to pocket (low %) / reaching black volume / moving off from there (?)
M3 - sideways hop into sidepull (low %) / crimpy step up to top
M4 - double dyno (low %) / holding cut-loose on blob / finishing from there (?)
The problem being this time we didn't get to see many of the later cruxes (when we did, like on M1, they were very cool climbing). In fact keeping this multi-crux format and loosing the low percentage moves would seem a good way of maintaining a high and varied challenge.

[Fiend]

Further to my previous remark about more problems using wall features, this is the one I meant:

https://youtu.be/-wRrDSnq1X8?t=5176

I do now recall there was some frustrations with slipping feet, but it does manage to be both tricky, and outdoory, without being parkoury.

[Sasquatch]

My theory is it's tied somewhat into the shift away from the 4+ format. You're forced to generate separation via attempts on low-percentage moves, and most (all?) final problems just have a single crux, which once overcome usually means a top.

I agree with the logic of 4. being a problem, but I don't agree with the single crux analysis. One of the pleasures of this years comps is seeing a lot of multi-crux problems, which show a larger amount of interesting climbing. Take the seeming / likely cruxes in the men's this time:
M1 - starting jump (low %) / sideways dyno / flick out into left hold / final match
M2 - dyno to pocket (low %) / reaching black volume / moving off from there (?)
M3 - sideways hop into sidepull (low %) / crimpy step up to top
M4 - double dyno (low %) / holding cut-loose on blob / finishing from there (?)
The problem being this time we didn't get to see many of the later cruxes (when we did, like on M1, they were very cool climbing). In fact keeping this multi-crux format and loosing the low percentage moves would seem a good way of maintaining a high and varied challenge.

This was the problem for the mens.  When the best climber in semi's (who happens to be remarkably well rounded, but not a parkour expert) can't even get a zone and barely gets off the ground I think there was a distinct style set, and it 100% supported the Japanese style.  I thought the problems were generally shit, but the results were generally fair.

[finbarrr]

world championships traversing-on-lead? 


 

[bigironhorse]

Quite enjoyed the women's comp overall though semis were too hard.

Mens comp was pretty pants. Too much coordination / park bore bollocks.

I like the idea of having different styles for each of the four problems.

[Doylo]

Final of the Olympics bouldering -  Ondra stood there staring at some widely spaced coloured blobs. Be some showcase. 

[andy_e]

1-6-11 on massive slopers. It's the only way forward.

[SA Chris]

Final of the Olympics bouldering -  Ondra stood there staring at some widely spaced coloured blobs. Be some showcase.

I thought that after Shauna spent most of one of her problems just standing there looking at the holds. Love to hear commentators fill in over that.

[Fiend]

Final of the Olympics bouldering -  Ondra stood there staring at an exact replica of Burden Of Dreams.

[36chambers]

Re: Men's bouldering.

I must admit that I actually enjoyed watching Ondra get shutdown in the finals. Especially when some of the moves he couldn't do were flashed by other people.

[teestub]

You know Tomoa would just double dyno through a Burden of Dreams replica!

[teestub]

Also I assume the boulder problem setters would have been an international mix as usual, and as such any chat about setting for a Japanese advantage would be unfounded?

Ondra looked stoked to be back in some ‘proper’ climbing, crimping the fuck out of some screw ons in the lead semis.

[tomtom]

Enjoyed the women’s finals. Just waiting for men’s.