Janja quoted as missing the rest of the boulder WCs:
“I’ve decided to skip the [rest of the] Boulder season this year. The Olympics last year were a pretty hard take on physical and mental preparation, so I feel that I need a little time off from comps and this year is the perfect year to do that."
Seems pretty clear the problems in women's semis and finals were too hard for most of the field, shame but not sure how they split Janja and Natalia otherwise? I guess if it was set at a level more doable for the rest, those two would just flash everything...
At least if Janja misses the rest of the season that won't be a concern!
Edit: I've not watched it (paywall), just going on the lack of tops for the rest of the field.
I remember the women's field having this problem before, but with more athletes, back in around 2014. You had Anna Stohr, Jule Wurn, Shauna, Akiyo, and (I think) Melissa Le Neve, operating at a totally different level than the rest, so it was those 5 plus a bonus person in finals each week, and qualis/semis was them all absolutely crushing and then maybe a top for the others. See also the BBCs when Shauna was at peak, it wasn't even a competition, just Shauna with 4 easy flashes and then the rest struggling for anything. But I'm not sure what you can really do, I thought this comp had a good balance and still had tension and was fun to watch.
Will be a shame for the show if Janja skips, but exciting to see whatever it is that she is motivated for instead! Hopefully she can pull out a winter send of Dura Dura...
I remember the women's field having this problem before, but with more athletes, back in around 2014. You had Anna Stohr, Jule Wurn, Shauna, Akiyo, and (I think) Melissa Le Neve, operating at a totally different level than the rest, so it was those 5 plus a bonus person in finals each week, and qualis/semis was them all absolutely crushing and then maybe a top for the others. See also the BBCs when Shauna was at peak, it wasn't even a competition, just Shauna with 4 easy flashes and then the rest struggling for anything. But I'm not sure what you can really do, I thought this comp had a good balance and still had tension and was fun to watch.
Will be a shame for the show if Janja skips, but exciting to see whatever it is that she is motivated for instead! Hopefully she can pull out a winter send of Dura Dura...
Think those are easier situations though: with one climber way out you set at the level of the rest - maybe not so much fun for Janja (or whoever) but still a good show as the other 5 in finals get to fight on problems at the appropriate level.
Similarly if you have 3 or more at a higher level - set for them, a bit of a shame for the others in the final, but there'll be enough tops from the best few to be fun watching.
In this case in order to split the top 2, the problems have to be so hard that most of the field don't get to do much climbing (2 tops out if a possible 16 from the first 4 climbers, and all on the same problem). Can't see an easy way round it, as you need to split the top two.
Floaty performance from Fujii, absolutely cruising.
I remember the women's field having this problem before, but with more athletes, back in around 2014. You had Anna Stohr, Jule Wurn, Shauna, Akiyo, and (I think) Melissa Le Neve, operating at a totally different level than the rest, so it was those 5 plus a bonus person in finals each week, and qualis/semis was them all absolutely crushing and then maybe a top for the others.
I remember the women's field having this problem before, but with more athletes, back in around 2014. You had Anna Stohr, Jule Wurn, Shauna, Akiyo, and (I think) Melissa Le Neve, operating at a totally different level than the rest, so it was those 5 plus a bonus person in finals each week, and qualis/semis was them all absolutely crushing and then maybe a top for the others.
On the flipside, this was (arguably) one of the most interesting season(s) in the women's comps as it was always a battle between these 5 and it was always pretty open as to who would win, including the 6th competitor which tended to a wider pool of about 6 more.
I've not watched the latest comp, but it seems there was yet another terrible IFSC rule-change which meant competitors could view pictures of the problems in advance of the observation?!
Doesn't seem to have been much appreciated by the climbers - IFSC again putting their own ideas ahead of what competitors/regular fans want?
I think the idea of pre viewing was to make the problems more doable and this more appealing to television audience.
Really? Surely a couple of tarps would suffice.
We recorded these "replays" and watched the women's last night and it was very odd. They only showed Brooke doing P1, there was apparently controversy about Brooke on P2 which was alluded to but not shown? They showed no footage of the Japanese girl - was this deliberate? Assume everyone else had a similar experience?
We watched Women's final on Monday night and the Men's last night. on Discovery.
Both full coverage. Inexplicably there was no commentary for the Men's, though there was background/audience noise.
Not an issue for us but if gaining a new paying customer base is the evil master plan they need to get their shit together. I would imagine that trying to watch this as a non climber without commentary would be hard to figure.
We watched Women's final on Monday night and the Men's last night. on Discovery.
Both full coverage. Inexplicably there was no commentary for the Men's, though there was background/audience noise.
Not an issue for us but if gaining a new paying customer base is the evil master plan they need to get their shit together. I would imagine that trying to watch this as a non climber without commentary would be hard to figure.
When I had Discovery for a month for the Olympics, there was an audio toggle to turn the commentary on and off, not sure if this is still the case?
The Olympic Channel has the complete stream (without annoying Eurosport commentators) that all the other regions got live, but it's extremely well hidden
https://olympics.com/en/video/sport-climbing-women-s-men-s-boulder-finals-world-cup-seoul (https://olympics.com/en/video/sport-climbing-women-s-men-s-boulder-finals-world-cup-seoul)
Anyone know if SLC round 1 replay is available free anywhere?
PSA: seems to be available free in Europe today! Would be good if they had given some notice, but tune in to see a Brit in finals for the first time in a while
PSA: seems to be available free in Europe today! Would be good if they had given some notice, but tune in to see a Brit in finals for the first time in a while
Good knowledge, cheers for spotting that
PSA: seems to be available free in Europe today! Would be good if they had given some notice, but tune in to see a Brit in finals for the first time in a while
Good knowledge, cheers for spotting that
Not so long ago Max was in the final in one of the SLC BWCs last year.
PSA: seems to be available free in Europe today! Would be good if they had given some notice, but tune in to see a Brit in finals for the first time in a while
Good knowledge, cheers for spotting that
Not so long ago Max was in the final in one of the SLC BWCs last year.
True! I think this time it came with more optimism of a podium, as opposed to a surprise finals spot
Caught up on the men's last night. Superb effort from Max!! I wondered whether he got his tactics slightly wrong on the last problem - it looked like the kind of move you'd need to try several times quickly to get the feel for it then rest and have an all or nothing go? Anyway, super impressive and like others said, he didn't look out of place at all.
The qualifications for Innsbruck are on the Black Diamond Facebook page right now. Sorry, can't seem to link but on Shauna's IG.
Just had a peek and it seems to be one fixed camera position from about 2 miles away, oh well.
Edit: too slow, beaten to it 😊
Is there a stream of the women anywhere? Just realized they're climbing at the same timeI'm struggling to find it.....
Max is sitting in 5th for the season, just behind Mejdi Schalk. Will be tough to catch Tomoa Narasaki and Kokoro Fujii in 2nd and 3rd, but definitely still possible.
Max is sitting in 5th for the season, just behind Mejdi Schalk. Will be tough to catch Tomoa Narasaki and Kokoro Fujii in 2nd and 3rd, but definitely still possible.
Looks like Mejdi hasn't made semis, so 4th is almost in the bag
Irrespective of whether Max gets 4th or 5th he has a top 10 ranking which means he is 'Extra Quota' ie he is on top of the normal team quota.
Think this is right, Japan just have lots in the top ten!Irrespective of whether Max gets 4th or 5th he has a top 10 ranking which means he is 'Extra Quota' ie he is on top of the normal team quota.
What does this mean? GB will get 6 men's spots next year? Didn't think there was a limit on that so not sure i'm understanding correctly - eg Japan seem to always have tonnes of climbers, I figured it was just up to each federation as to how many athletes they send
Irrespective of whether Max gets 4th or 5th he has a top 10 ranking which means he is 'Extra Quota' ie he is on top of the normal team quota.
What does this mean? GB will get 6 men's spots next year? Didn't think there was a limit on that so not sure i'm understanding correctly - eg Japan seem to always have tonnes of climbers, I figured it was just up to each federation as to how many athletes they send
Is the app correct or am I just too dumb to understand it.
How is Brooke 5= with 4T5Z when Mia Aoyagi and Jessie Pilz are in 11= with 5T5Z?
Looks like Mejdi hasn't made semis, so 4th is almost in the bag
Ah! That makes sense.
I guess the answer to the first question was "Too dumb...."!
Irrespective of whether Max gets 4th or 5th he has a top 10 ranking which means he is 'Extra Quota' ie he is on top of the normal team quota.
What does this mean? GB will get 6 men's spots next year? Didn't think there was a limit on that so not sure i'm understanding correctly - eg Japan seem to always have tonnes of climbers, I figured it was just up to each federation as to how many athletes they send
There is a fixed quota of 5 athletes for each team (per gender) plus the host nation gets another 5 athletes. And then there are the Extra Quota athletes, who are the top 10 from the previous years World Cup Ranking. JPN had 3 men in the Top 10 from 2021 so they get a quota of 8 for the men this year.
Sounds like its all gonna kick off after Alex W's insta-gripe. :popcorn:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CfHNs7-jRb3/ (https://www.instagram.com/p/CfHNs7-jRb3/)
Beaten to it. :thumbsup:
I've not looked into the figures, but it strikes me that Fujii is the best qualifier/semi finalist out of anyone on the circuit currently, but doesn't always manage it in finals.
Interestingly the co-commentator (didn't catch his name) said that Kokoro is known to struggle with nerves. Ties in to and supports my hypothesis from a few months back!
I've not looked into the figures, but it strikes me that Fujii is the best qualifier/semi finalist out of anyone on the circuit currently, but doesn't always manage it in finals.
Tomoa (probably considered the most successful male boulder) has 5 golds in WC and 2 in WCHTbh I didn't realise it was so close. However I'd argue my point can still stand, since wins aren't everything:
Kokoro (reckoned to be a bag of nerves in finals) has 5 golds in WC and 1 in WCH
Is it actually a 3 horse race though? Janja seemed comfortably ahead for the most part.
Also I’m surprised there isn’t more uproar about the boulders being observed by some people, surely that’s a big knock to the credibility of the round?
A few days have passed since the World Cup in Chamonix, but the feeling of disappointment about the routesetting is still more dominant than the joy about my win.
After months spent dedicated to training and working on every single detail, each competitor wants to show what he/she is capable of. What happened in Chamonix is not what I’ve been training for and honestly feels disrespectful towards everyone’s investment to push the sport. Allow us to show what we’ve got, to fight against the pump and be fully satisfied for a reason! ✌🏼
It might be interesting to speculate why.
I think the BMC might want to work on their wording of press releases, it hurt me a little inside to read that... It even manages to avoid mentioning the most important thing which is whether there's a free livestream. :lol:
Athletes will compete in the individual events of, Boulder, Lead and Speed climbing - I don't like the capitals, but I guess that's not the BMC's fault. I also don't like the use of the comma after "of"; surely a colon or nothing would be more appropriate?
I wonder whether they will change the name of the British Bouldering Championships to the British Boulder Championships but I doubt it :-)
How are the female finals too easy again??? incredible, no one wants to go to count back or time.
Same chief routesetter as the catastrophe in Dallas for the youth worlds and for Brixen with the video where he laughs about the female competitors.....Really?? Have you got a link - that sounds pretty terrible.
I wouldn't be surprised if Janja has a think about competing next year. She seems to have been pretty disillusioned with the setting for a long time now, and this weekend will surely only have added to that. Something needs to change, and soon.
Same chief routesetter as the catastrophe in Dallas for the youth worlds and for Brixen with the video where he laughs about the female competitors.....Really?? Have you got a link - that sounds pretty terrible.
I wouldn't be surprised if Janja has a think about competing next year. She seems to have been pretty disillusioned with the setting for a long time now, and this weekend will surely only have added to that. Something needs to change, and soon.
I reckon Janja will compete next year for 2 reasons:Agree on 1, that hadn't crossed my mind and i'm sure this would be enough to keep her. Hopefully it can be a good season that challenges her and the other top women.
1) The process for qualifying for Paris 2024 will almost certainly require competing in 2023, and
2) National Team quotas are dependant on having high ranking athletes so the Slovenian federation will be keen for Janja to compete.
I believe it was this one, somewhere in this second part (?) https://youtu.be/4j_5fAE34T8I had a flick through and couldn't quite find it, but the video certainly goes to show how stark the lack of women setters on the circuit it. Maybe it would be less of an issue if there weren't problems with the setting for women's comps, but there evidently is a problem. To do the classic reversal: if the team was all women, and men's comps routinely suffered from poorly judged sets, then there would be no hesitation to suggest that the setters struggled due to their sex. Hopefully equally mixed setting teams is the solution, and it can be implemented sooner rather than later.
Basically they are working on one of the women's semi boulders and joking like we should make it harder, but not TOO hard hahahaha, then in reality almost all of the 20 in semis topped it, about half flash...
Maybe some more stuff in there too but it's quite long and I was quite turned off after that and some other similar stuff. Editing can make anyone a villain but it seems somewhat of a theme.
https://youtu.be/lGyfZmUni24
This happened last year, doubt it's the future of bouldering comps but would be interesting to see happen more often. I suppose it's similar to the attempts the GB Titans comp made to have a mixed comp.
It seems the setters tend to underestimate the strength of the best woman. But I wonder if the difficulty is that there is a much bigger gap between the best woman and the 10th best woman versus the best man and the 10th best man.
I have to disagree. It's a competitive discipline with clear rules which the athletes are fully aware of. Janja must have known that there was another climber on better form than her and that therefore a slow top might not win it for her? More importantly, it was brilliant to see Toby battle his way onto the podium and I'm slightly amazed that isn't the main focus of discussion here. First male podium in lead since 1994 I'm told, awesome if true. I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to help out so I got to see some of the action, and returning from doing an airport run just in time to see Toby start in the finals was such a privilege.It seems the setters tend to underestimate the strength of the best woman. But I wonder if the difficulty is that there is a much bigger gap between the best woman and the 10th best woman versus the best man and the 10th best man.
I agree the mens being closer makes it simpler, but I'd argue that when Janja was hugely dominant that didn't really complicate the routesetting - just make sure the rest of the women are split, and if Janja doesn't feel challenged then tough for her, but the competition is still fair and representing performances.
Now we have a situation with 2 or 3 competitors well clear, so it's vital the routes are hard enough to split those top athletes. Edinburgh essentially failed tell us who was the best climber!
I have to disagree. It's a competitive discipline with clear rules which the athletes are fully aware of. Janja must have known that there was another climber on better form than her and that therefore a slow top might not win it for her? More importantly, it was brilliant to see Toby battle his way onto the podium and I'm slightly amazed that isn't the main focus of discussion here. First male podium in lead since 1994 I'm told, awesome if true. I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to help out so I got to see some of the action, and returning from doing an airport run just in time to see Toby start in the finals was such a privilege.It seems the setters tend to underestimate the strength of the best woman. But I wonder if the difficulty is that there is a much bigger gap between the best woman and the 10th best woman versus the best man and the 10th best man.
I agree the mens being closer makes it simpler, but I'd argue that when Janja was hugely dominant that didn't really complicate the routesetting - just make sure the rest of the women are split, and if Janja doesn't feel challenged then tough for her, but the competition is still fair and representing performances.
Now we have a situation with 2 or 3 competitors well clear, so it's vital the routes are hard enough to split those top athletes. Edinburgh essentially failed tell us who was the best climber!
I have to disagree. It's a competitive discipline with clear rules which the athletes are fully aware of. Janja must have known that there was another climber on better form than her and that therefore a slow top might not win it for her?
More importantly, it was brilliant to see Toby battle his way onto the podium and I'm slightly amazed that isn't the main focus of discussion here. First male podium in lead since 1994 I'm told, awesome if true. I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to help out so I got to see some of the action, and returning from doing an airport run just in time to see Toby start in the finals was such a privilege.
How did the event go, in your experience? Hard to tell with the IFSC social media blackout. Also with all the complaints in advance about tickets - was the crowd full?I don't have any prior experience to compare to, but the IFSC delegates were very complimentary about it all being pulled together at such short notice. Due to stepping in when China had to cancel, and not having hosted for a decade or more, it was all a big learning curve. Probably the best thing was because of this it was all hands on deck, and a lot of people like myself who are not involved in the comps side came to help out and got a new perspective on it all. I kinda feel invested in it now in a way I didn't before, and knowing that there were young athletes competing due to the host getting extra places, and how much it meant to them, made it all worthwhile. Thursday night was pretty grim though, not knowing if it could go ahead or not and waiting for guidance from DCMS etc. The crowd was full apart from Speed quals on Friday, the spectator space was heavily compromised by the main arena boulders. Getting rid of them could massively increase numbers but of course you then reduce the day to day climbing space.