[edshakey]

Bit disappointing that the British lead champs clashes with the last world cup of the season? I appreciate the schedule can be busy, and there may always be people who don't do BLCCs to rest for a WCs that don't actually clash, but at least give them the choice. By making our best lead climbers choose between WC and national comp, we're just going to get a substandard British champs.

Anyway, good luck Toby in finals this eve!

[edshakey]

Oops, penultimate WC, not last

[Duma]

Anyone know where to see Laval results? (Ideally without attempting to use the IFSCs horror show of a website) The app isn't updating for some reason, am I missing something?

[Bradders]

https://ifsc.results.info/#/event/1308

[Duma]

Thanks Bradders!

[teestub]

Worth noting that the full streams for Laval are on the IFSC youtube https://www.youtube.com/@sportclimbing
forgot how fun it is watching a comp before they decided they needed to be behind a paywall or whatever.

[edshakey]

Toby absolutely cruised it! Easily most deserving over the rounds, made the others look like punters on that final lead route.

Stressful watch! Time to relax now...

[Duma]

Yeah looked different class didn't he

Staja had some interesting comments on her IG about home advantage, are the setters also setting for the French team training?

[edshakey]

Yeah looked different class didn't he

For sure. Looked so solid, clearly progressed a lot since Bern. Hopefully he can have a good off season (some rock maybe  ) and come into Paris feeling relaxed and confident.

Staja had some interesting comments on her IG about home advantage, are the setters also setting for the French team training?

Can you copy/paste for the non instagramers? I'm intrigued as to her angle, since these were the routesetters:

Chief Routesetter Boulder: Garrett Gregor (USA)
Routesetters Boulder: Sergio Verdasco (ESP) - Remi Samyn (FRA)
Chief Routesetter Lead: Adam Pustelnik (POL)
Routesetters Lead: Jan Zbranek (CZE) - Julien Gras (FRA)

Two French, out of six. Doesn't strike me as a massive advantage?

[Duma]

She's deleted it now, and I can't remember the exact wording. Guess she wouldn't want it quoted on the web now which is fair enough.

[duncan]

She said: "second time losing the Olympic ticket eith (sic) the second place on the continental quail from the home country competitor. That is really fu**ing bitter you know".

I don't think that is necessarily having a go at home route setting. She's understandably pissed-off at coming second but Oriane Bertone looked the most likely throughout and was first by a good margin.

Great competition with a good spread of results in both men and women's comps. No controversies, no-one timing-out on lead, no mass tops other than the women's quals. which didn't really affect things. A couple of the final boulders were a little too hard or a little too easy but, overall, there was good separation. The eventual winners were first or second in all three rounds and, to me, the clear stands-outs of the event. In both finals, the second placed were quite a way back, not close to top spot.

Good to have it on YouTube without having to resort to VPN.

NSFW  :

The men's lead route setters must have been high-fiving when Toby topped-out.

[Duma]

She said: "second time losing the Olympic ticket eith (sic) the second place on the continental quail from the home country competitor. That is really fu**ing bitter you know".

I don't think that is necessarily having a go at home route setting. She's understandably pissed-off at coming second but Oriane Bertone looked the most likely throughout and was first by a good margin.]

Thats not the post I was referring to. That one is still up.

[abarro81]

Sounds like she's just bitter and looking for a reason that's not "they were better than me on the day"

[teestub]

She's understandably pissed-off at coming second but Oriane Bertone looked the most likely throughout and was first by a good margin.

This. Staša looked good but Oriane was a level up, near perfect boulder round and looked to have gas in the tank.

[Bradders]

Yeah looked different class didn't he

He still looked to be struggling on the steepest bit, which has happened before. Definitely a weakness for him. Once he gets onto a headwall though he's in a different league! Brilliant to have a Brit into the Olympics again.

[PeteHukb]

Agh so psyched for Toby! Will be good for him to have demonstrated to himself just how much he deserved the top spot and the Olympic ticket.

[edshakey]

Yeah looked different class didn't he

He still looked to be struggling on the steepest bit, which has happened before. Definitely a weakness for him. Once he gets onto a headwall though he's in a different league! Brilliant to have a Brit into the Olympics again.

That's true, my heart was in my mouth on the campus section. But the difference between him and Adam was amazing - both started looking uncomfortable around the same point but Toby just didn't stop fighting, he can just keep going when he looks completely done!

The men's lead route setters must have been high-fiving when Toby topped-out.

Glad the last move wasn't the decider, I hate when lead routes are split like that. In the end, it just made for a nice showy way to start the celebrations.

[SA Chris]

Not IFSC, but Jesse Gruper & Natalia Grossman have Olympic spots from winning at Pan American Games.

https://olympics.com/en/news/pan-american-games-2023-natalia-grossman-wins-sport-climbing

https://olympics.com/en/news/pan-am-games-jesse-grupper-gold-sport-climbing-resultssantiago-2023

[jwi]

Grimper magazine is giving high praise to Toby Roberts https://www.grimper.com/news-tqo-laval-2023-toby-robert-bien-trop-fort

[danm]

Grimper magazine is giving high praise to Toby Roberts https://www.grimper.com/news-tqo-laval-2023-toby-robert-bien-trop-fort

The translation of that is pure gold! Caesar and Brutus, you wouldn't get that in a dry UKC newsflash! Arthur Delicque must be the Gallic equivalent to Grimer...

[Percy B]

There was a team of 5 setters for boulder. One IFSC chief (from USA) and then 3 French setters and Sergio (who is almost an honorary Frenchie as he spends so much time setting there). I think the setting team for lead was more balanced but it was fairly French heavy setting team for boulder.... Maybe Stasa has a point? There is certainly a history of French climbers doing very well when the setting team is predominantly from their home country....

[PlainCroi$$ant]

Over the course of all the boulder world cups this year Oriane scored 2649 points to Stasa’s 1893 - so it could also be that she’s been consistently climbing better than her all year and has continued that form…

[wasbeen]

Is there any other sport that is so influenced by route/course setting? Whether or not it influenced the results this time, it is clearly an enormous elephant in the room. I wonder when we will see the first route fixing ban?

Take the men's final boulder problems. One problem was topped by everyone. Leaving 3 problems to select from. Two of which were slabs and one appeared un-toppable. It is quite likely that you end up with a selection which benefits a very particular set of skills.

No idea what the answer is but clearly having a bigger sample size (more routes/problems) would help.

[jwi]

Is there any other sport that is so influenced by route/course setting? [...]

Alpine skiing. The courses are usually set by the top-coaches and they actively try to set the course to be advantageous to their athlete. It might be harder/easier to influence the outcome in skiing. I am not good enough at skiing courses, and not on competition style indoor climbing either, to be able to compare.

[mde]

From my understanding of the two sports (alpine skiing vs. indoor bouldering, obviously I haven't competed at top level in either) I would say you can achieve a bigger advantage in bouldering. In skiing, there are still quite strict rules for course setting (e.g. gate distances) and whereas one can set the course a bit more direct/faster or not (within clearly defined limits), one cannot set something like "specific moves" that one could train beforehand, but the other athletes cannot.

In bouldering I'd say it is different, if one has the opportunity to train on the relevant wall angles (and know them), on the holds that are used for the comp and in movement patterns that will be tested at the comp, one has a quite big competitive advantage. After all, there is much more freedom if setting a boulder compared to a skiing course.

But the analogy to alpine skiing also sprung to my mind when I saw Stasas story. Especially in downhill and super g most top athletes come from a small selection of national teams that have the size and funds to organize trainings in racing conditions. Certainly in bouldering the effort for training under comp conditions is not likewise, but still you require top setters that permanently provide problems with the newest selection of holds for not being disadvantaged. And I imagine as the sport matures (and hence the difference between athletes becomes smaller), this may be even more important.