The second Masters team bouldering comp took place on Saturday 1st March at the Edge wall in Sheffield. The comp takes a different approach to most as entrants compete in teams - each of four men, two women. There were 20 problem 'stations' in all, some that were unisex and some with either extra holds for the women or an entirely different problem altogether. To add a tactical dimension to proceedings women could opt to climb a mans problem for double the points and men could opt for the womens problems at half the points. And tactics would prove to be the order of the day with some of the elite men opting for the womens problems and vice versa.
There were three different rooms each with a circuit of problems to go at, the bouldering wall had two circuits (hence the congestion), there was a circuit in the main wall and there was one in the woodie - with four roof problems taking in the full length of the woodie ceiling...
An excellent (and tactical) performance from the Moon team (Ben Moon, Nic Sellars, Dave Musgrove, Miles Gibson, Jo Gordon and Catherine Schirrmacher) saw them trounce the Scarpa team's hopes of success by nearly 50 points, Gaz's A5 team were hot on Scarpa's heels (b'dum tschh!!), followed by Prana and La Sportiva in fifth. Full results courtesy of
CragX.
Individually, Lucy Creamer (scarpa) walked it with 175 of a possible 200, Sadie Renwick (A5-5.10) was second and Jo Gordon (moon) came third. In the mens event Ben Moon (guess!) won with an incredible 190, Andy Earl (Scarpa) second and Nic Sellars (Moon) third. Big Malc was injured and Steve Maclure wowed the watching crowd by managing to land on his face from the top of the bouldering wall. Hero of the day - Ben Moon. He is just awesome!
A very long and very tiring day was finished off by supping beers courtesy of the
PlanetFear boys before a party at the R&R bar on London Road, where non other than our own FatBoySlimFast was on the ones and twos. This roving reporter was close to passing out from the PlanetFear beer at this point and went home to eat Lard, but am assured it was a good do.
