the shizzle > diet, training and injuries

How tall are the best competitions climbers?

(1/10) > >>

jwi:
From this excellent blogpost: https://www.thinkingclimbing.com/2023/12/what-is-average-height-of-best.html

--- Quote from: 'TOMEK' ---
* The best male lead climbers are around 174 cm tall and the best boulderers around 175 cm tall.
The best female lead climbers are around 163 cm tall and the best boulderers around 164 cm tall.
The best male climbers are on average 4 cm shorter than their non-climbing peers and female climbers around 1 cm shorter.
In both, men's and women's categories, the best boulderers are taller than the best lead climbers.
The difference between bouldering and lead climbing has been shrinking during the last decade, especially since 2019.
It is harder to maintain consistently good results in bouldering than in lead climbing.
*
--- End quote ---

The analysis is pretty solid. Borderline ‘I can't believe someone provide me with this for free’-quality. To be much better, you would have to throw some money at it, imho.

Wellsy:
Shorties rule I guess

Although actually I think it's more that short people weigh less tbh. Being 5" taller wouldn't make their fingers any stronger after all, but they'd weigh 15kgs more probably

jwi:

--- Quote from: Wellsy on January 28, 2024, 03:52:50 pm ---Shorties rule I guess


--- End quote ---

But not too short, as the data show. There is also less variation in height among elite competition climbers than in the general population.

Duma:
Not read, but I would guess that the general population overstate their height to some extent?

Surprised there's not a greater height (weight) diff between lead and bouldering tbh. Wonder if that would have been true pre olympics.

edshakey:

--- Quote from: jwi on January 28, 2024, 02:33:12 pm ---The analysis is pretty solid. Borderline ‘I can't believe someone provide me with this for free’-quality. To be much better, you would have to throw some money at it, imho.

--- End quote ---

I was very impressed at first glance, still am to an extent. But couldn't let this go by:


--- Quote --- Before you ask, the super-tall outlier is Paul Jenft of France at mighty 198 cm. He is an outlier indeed, given that the next tallest climber measures 188 cm, Meichi Narasaki from Japan, and then Adam Ondra from Czechia with 186 cm
--- End quote ---

Not sure how anyone could read this and not be skeptical. So I looked it up, and sure enough, the IFSC list his height as 198. However I'm pretty convinced it's a mistake.

For example, in 2021 he made lead finals at Chamonix and lined up on the stage between Stefano Ghisolfi and Luka Potočar, seen here at 1:09:46 . IFSC lists their heights as 169cm and 177cm respectively (very plausible). Not sure if I'm going crazy, but to me there's no way Jenft is a full 21cm taller than Potočar. Just looking at other videos too, of him climbing and seeing others do the same bloc, he just doesn't look quite that big.

Another method of comparison is Meichi Narasaki lining up next to Rishat Khaibullin at Hachioji combined final in 2019 (188cm vs 170cm) at 12:02 here https://www.youtube.com/live/hZ7Gmllr-a8. Looks remarkably similar to Jenft and Ghisolfi, and yet there's meant to be 9cm difference between the two comparisons.

Also, googling Paul Jenft height yields only one other relevant result, which says he is 186cm. There is no timestamp on the profile (relevant because Jenft is only 20, so old articles could list height before he reached his adult height), but it does refer to results from 2023, so it would appear to be up to date.

I'm not 100% sure I'm right, but I'm pretty sure. This report later talks about how Jenft skews a finding by 0.5cm. Seems crazy to have him kept in the dataset, since it's not just incorrect data, but it's having a sizeable affect on findings. If you're going to call out an outlier, surely you check that it's still worth including.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page