[Bradders]

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cw0gZKwPj3c/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Top notch walking skills too, six mile walk in to it apparently.

Fourth ascent after Daniel Woods, Drew Ruana and Sean Bailey. 

She skipped 8C but has previously done 6 8B+s including Spectre, which she suggested was harder than 8B for her height.

[Wellsy]

A true milestone, well done to her

[lukeyboy]

Fantastic news

It's great to see the male / female performance gap shrink to just a measly grade, especially in bouldering which I'd (naively?) think would be the last discipline to approach parity.

[Durbs]

Amazing stuff.

Strange to admit, but I've not heard of her before? A dark horse, or just somehow slipped my attention?

[remus]

Strange to admit, but I've not heard of her before? A dark horse, or just somehow slipped my attention?

Not really a dark horse imo, but she's not super heavy on the promo either.

https://climbing-history.org/climber/815/katie-lamb

[lukeyboy]

Strange to admit, but I've not heard of her before? A dark horse, or just somehow slipped my attention?

Not really a dark horse imo, but she's not super heavy on the promo either.

https://climbing-history.org/climber/815/katie-lamb

I was pleasantly surprised to click on the IG link and not see it start with "✅ FIRST FEMALE 8C+" or similar. If you're not going to spray about that then some dark horse kudos is definitely deserved.

And yes I know, if she was a proper dark horse she wouldn't be posting on social media, would never breath a word of her ascents, swear her friends to secrecy, blah blah

[SA Chris]

It's great to see the male / female performance gap shrink to just a measly grade, especially in bouldering which I'd (naively?) think would be the last discipline to approach parity.

Speculatively - as problems are often easily identified as being better suited to some than others based on your "assets", I suppose it's not hard to find one that suits you best, regardless of gender.

Irrespective of this, the climbing is still going to be hard for anyone at that grade, and an amazing effort.

[36chambers]

Big news! 

It's great to see the male / female performance gap shrink to just a measly grade, especially in bouldering which I'd (naively?) think would be the last discipline to approach parity.

I genuinely can't remember if I read this somewhere, or if it was something that Shawn Raboutou mentioned whilst we were chillin in Magic Wood a couple of months ago (Shawn says hi btw), but apparently Brooke was close to climbing Box Therapy in her first session! So hopefully there's more uber hard female ascents to come. (Although perhaps after the olympics )

[remus]

...but apparently Brooke was close to climbing Box Therapy in her first session! So hopefully there's more uber hard female ascents to come. (Although perhaps after the olympics )

Yeah, Shawn also mentions it in this vid with Magnus

[SA Chris]

Her fingerlock when she pisses Traphouse still makes me ill.

[JamieG]

It's great to see the male / female performance gap shrink to just a measly grade, especially in bouldering which I'd (naively?) think would be the last discipline to approach parity.

Speculatively - as problems are often easily identified as being better suited to some than others based on your "assets", I suppose it's not hard to find one that suits you best, regardless of gender.

Irrespective of this, the climbing is still going to be hard for anyone at that grade, and an amazing effort.

I agree that you can always find problems to suit your style, but I really don't think that explains the gender parity in climbing compared to most other sports. It really is remarkable how small the gap is between top male and female climbers. An awesome effort by Katie Lamb and I'm sure it won't be long before we see more from herself and others.

[gme]

I'm not amazed as its a power to weight based exercise that predominantly comes down to fingers which are a small muscle group. Seems logical to me that women could become equal to men.


However i don't think we are as close to that as it would appear jut looking at grades. Whilst the gap has closed a lot its still pretty wide, 8C+ was done by a man 13 years ago at least and 9b 15 years ago. 

Very impressive though and definitely much closer than it was in the 90s. Add to that Janja, probably the best women by a decent margin, doesn't really climb outside and i maybe totally wrong.

[Wellsy]

I think the gap is there but a lot closer than many sports, especially team contact sports, fight sports, absolute metric sports etc. Look at sprinting, weightlifting, rugby and so on.

The world record women's effort in a lot of sports doesn't even qualify for a national let alone international men's comp. But the hardest female outdoor boulder ascent is only beaten in absolute grade terms by arguably 6-8ish guys depending on how the grades shake out. That doesn't seem like a huge gap. And you're telling me that there aren't women who can do BoD? I reckon there def are

[Bradders]

However i don't think we are as close to that as it would appear jut looking at grades. Whilst the gap has closed a lot its still pretty wide, 8C+ was done by a man 13 years ago at least and 9b 15 years ago. 

The length of time a gap has existed is irrelevant to its current size.

That said I agree the gap is still pretty wide.

We've had:

1x female 8C+ ascent by 1 person
10x male 9A ascents (I think that's right) by 7 people

And if you look beneath that, the number of men who've climbed 8C+ is massive. Only five women (I think) have climbed 8C or harder whereas I wouldn't be surprised if the number of men is in the hundreds. Obviously you then should consider participation numbers and so on but really at the top end of bouldering it's a big gap, as soon as you go beyond the absolute top.

[petejh]

Interesting to think about. If population men/women in a climbing discipline is different then on a average grade per-head basis women could be said to be over-performing versus men (or men are under-performing versus women, alternatively the hard upper limits of performance are being hit against by both, men first then women a little later). Men = a broad pyramid with a roughly proportional peak, women = a skyscraper with an antennae on top..?

Similar in winter mixed climbing where a couple of women (Ines Papert, a.n.others) have climbed as hard as the men, but hardly any breadth beneath them.

[remus]

...
10x male 9A ascents (I think that's right) by 7 people

And if you look beneath that, the number of men who've climbed 8C+ is massive...

12 ascents at 9A by 9 men by my count, with at least another 41 men who have climbed 8C+.

https://climbing-history.org/list/17/strongest-male-boulderers

[Dexter]

...
10x male 9A ascents (I think that's right) by 7 people

And if you look beneath that, the number of men who've climbed 8C+ is massive...

12 ascents at 9A by 9 men by my count, with at least another 41 men who have climbed 8C+.

https://climbing-history.org/list/17/strongest-male-boulderers

I wonder how those number change if alphane gets downgraded 

[Teaboy]

A woman in the top 50 of any sport is pretty unusual.

[36chambers]

I still believe you've got to climb 3 of a given grade to claim it, so kudos to Katie, and all the male wannabe 9A climbers, but you've all still got work to do

[yetix]

...but apparently Brooke was close to climbing Box Therapy in her first session! So hopefully there's more uber hard female ascents to come. (Although perhaps after the olympics )

Yeah, Shawn also mentions it in this vid with Magnus

Shawn says him and Brooke felt box therapy was more like hard v15 there. He also said that only Ashima had climbed v15, and with it being such a long one it's "boardering in being a route" from approx 2mins in.

Interesting to hear regardless though.

Who are the other v15 females other than Ashima? (Remus mentioned there were 4? Are 3 others questionable? I know that Jana from Czech gave an FA 8B+/C that linked into the second half of Terranova, but not sure on others.

Edit not sure where I got 4 other 8C female boulders from, did I make that up?

[Wellsy]

Daniel Woods, Sean Bailey and Drew Ruana all think it's 8C+, and they're all hardly slouches and pretty experienced at the grade. I don't think there's much question on this; she climbed an established, repeated and confirmed 8C+

[yetix]

Honestly I don't mind if it's 8C or 8C+ I simply pointed out Shawn's comment. However, Woods has had many blocs down and upgraded, because you know grades change with time and more ascents... I simply acknowledged what someone more experienced had said (Shawn)...

As Drew has said on Reddit and in podcasts, grades are more to describe an experience roughly and don't always match up from person to person anyhow.

[lukeyboy]

Interesting discussion.

I think it's the top performers that are relevant in the conversation about gender gap, not the breadth.

The fact that the hardest that the top achieving woman has climbed is only a grade different to the equivalent for a man, shows where each gender is in terms of what is physically possible, regardless of how often it has happened.

With much lower participation, you'd expect the women's 'pyramid' to be much slimmer than the mens, and you could even argue that we are further away from the physical limit for women than we are for men, given the smaller pool of participants and that this was much smaller still only quite recently.

[Duma]

Not discussed is that for men to push further requires FAs - this is much harder than repeats, and might explain some of the closeness?

[Muenchener]

A woman in the top 50 of any sport is pretty unusual.

The other - very niche - example that springs to mind is Nicky Spinks & Jasmin Paris in ultra fellrunning

[remus]

Who are the other v15 females other than Ashima? (Remus mentioned there were 4? Are 3 others questionable? I know that Jana from Czech gave an FA 8B+/C that linked into the second half of Terranova, but not sure on others.

As per usual it depends a bit on how you count, but I'd count 3 women as having climbed 8C: Ashima, Katrina Lehman and Mishka Ishi. Orianne reclimbed Satan i Helvete (Bas) after a hold broke and suggested 8C, but as I understand it subsequent ascents have said 8B+ (maybe with better beta?), and Oriane agreed on reflection. Pretty arbitrary, but I only count 'whole' grades on CH, so if someone gives something a slash I record it as the lower grade, so on CH Jana Švecová's Nova is in at 8B+.

https://climbing-history.org/list/18/strongest-female-boulderers
https://climbing-history.org/climb/2268/satan-i-helvete-(bas)

[yetix]

Thanks Remus for the clarification.

[User deactivated.]

12 ascents at 9A by 9 men by my count, with at least another 41 men who have climbed 8C+.

https://climbing-history.org/list/17/strongest-male-boulderers

I wonder how those number change if alphane gets downgraded 

It looks like we'd only lose Aidan Roberts from that list of 9 men (and probably not for long).

[wasbeen]

A woman in the top 50 of any sport is pretty unusual.

The other - very niche - example that springs to mind is Nicky Spinks & Jasmin Paris in ultra fellrunning

Even more niche is speedy cycling where the world record (184mph) is held by Denise Mueller-Korenek



Which seems unusual for a power based sport. Although, judging from that video. I expect logistics and cojones also play a significant role.

[Bradders]

...
10x male 9A ascents (I think that's right) by 7 people

And if you look beneath that, the number of men who've climbed 8C+ is massive...

12 ascents at 9A by 9 men by my count, with at least another 41 men who have climbed 8C+.

https://climbing-history.org/list/17/strongest-male-boulderers

Thanks Remus, I'd forgotten Timonov and Woods 

I was also counting Oriane as the 4th female 8Cer, didn't realise it'd since been downgraded.

Interesting discussion.

I think it's the top performers that are relevant in the conversation about gender gap, not the breadth.

The fact that the hardest that the top achieving woman has climbed is only a grade different to the equivalent for a man, shows where each gender is in terms of what is physically possible, regardless of how often it has happened.

I kind of get where you're coming from on this but personally I'd say breadth is far more important.

Think of it like the gender pay gap; it matters not one jot if a single woman is paid 5% less than the highest paid man, and a handful are paid 5% less than her, if all women are paid 20% less on average than the average man. You could say the pay gap was 5%, but the 20% gap on average is much more significant.

And the same applies here, the gap at the absolute top is now small, but look beneath and it's still extremely wide. In fact, it might even be growing?

Also, in terms of what's "physically possible", from a pure difficulty perspective I think women are perfectly capable of climbing the same grade as men. The style they do it in may end up being different though based on morphological / physiological differences.

[lukeyboy]

Think of it like the gender pay gap; it matters not one jot if a single woman is paid 5% less than the highest paid man, and a handful are paid 5% less than her, if all women are paid 20% less on average than the average man. You could say the pay gap was 5%, but the 20% gap on average is much more significant.

And the same applies here, the gap at the absolute top is now small, but look beneath and it's still extremely wide. In fact, it might even be growing?

I would think of it as very different to the gender pay gap (though appreciate that might just be my interpretation of the question).

With the gender pay gap, you mainly want to see how the average woman compares to the average man, in which case I agree that breadth is more important than the handful of top performers.

With the the top level of male and female climbing, it is (IMO) the top performers that are most relevant - breadth will inform you on the average standard and other interesting things, but those are different questions.

Also, in terms of what's "physically possible", from a pure difficulty perspective I think women are perfectly capable of climbing the same grade as men. The style they do it in may end up being different though based on morphological / physiological differences.

I agree anecdotally, but without any evidence it's only really an opinion. Backing this up with some objective(ish) evidence, i.e. top male and female performances, adds a lot to this I think.

[crimpinainteasy]

 I predict that in the next ten  years top women will match the top men in certain styles i.e. techy, flexy, and small edges but a gender gap will remain in problems involving more basic, thuggy and dynamic moves (ie things like the big Island and power of now).

[Muenchener]

Interview with Katie

[Hoseyb]

Really enjoyed the interview, I'm sure it would resonate with many of the off piste boulderer explorers on here

[dave k]

Brooke and Shaun have repeated Box and proposed a downgrade to V15!