Molly and Will - final chance for Olympic qualification

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I'm torn. I like the fact that having a multiplier means that a win is massive and it really incentivises high ranking. I also think the head to heads is the only way of making the speed round a "spectacle" but being the second best speed climber but only getting 5th is an annoying scenario.

I guess the way to look at speed is that the "Final" is the actual last race and the rest of the rounds are just heats you have to win.
 
Is the problem with comparing head to head speed with heats in a sprint not that speed climbing involves an element of risk which increases significantly as you try and give a better effort?
Runners might have to expend more or less effort depending on who they're up against in a heat, and this might affect their recovery for the next round, but it's unlikely that they'll have to try hard and end up tripping over and getting eliminated. As speed climbers go faster they have to use sequences that might be riskier or they might catch a hold badly/miss a hold etc which will result in them being knocked out.
Slopestyle gets around this by letting everyone have three runs where they can go for the risky stuff in the first ones and do something more conservative in the last if they've fucked up the first. That's the suggested time trial format for speed, but comes with the obvious disadvantage of being even more boring to watch than head to head speed. To mitigate the boredom and indignity of watching the world's best climbers trying to go up a 5+ faster than each other, could you set them off in reverse rank order and superimpose a horizontal line on the wall that climbs to the top at pace of the fastest individual so far? Like watching downhill skiing and seeing if they're green/red going through the splits.
 
Downgrading the speed route now, cant help yourself can you, you lanky scrittle botherer :eek:fftopic:
 
Will Hunt said:
Is the problem with comparing head to head speed with heats in a sprint not that speed climbing involves an element of risk which increases significantly as you try and give a better effort?
Runners might have to expend more or less effort depending on who they're up against in a heat, and this might affect their recovery for the next round, but it's unlikely that they'll have to try hard and end up tripping over and getting eliminated. As speed climbers go faster they have to use sequences that might be riskier or they might catch a hold badly/miss a hold etc which will result in them being knocked out.
The biggest difference for runners or swimmers is that their heats have 8 people, not 2, and that the fastest 2 or 3 go through, together with a small number of fastest losers.

This massively reduces the variance and the advantage of being in a particular heat over another.

There is still potential for one athlete to make an error and get knocked out by pushing too hard (false starts, disqualifications etc). This isn't a problem there as there isn't one specific person who gets a massive boost from it despite having done nothing to earn it. Similarly, getting a bad draw and drawing Usain Bolt in the first round isn't such a problem because there is more than one place up for grabs from the heat.

The problem with the speed climbing format is that the heats are 1v1 so the luck of the draw plays a much bigger part, with someone's speed score relying massively on who they are drawn against, not on how well they performed. The multiplication then amplifies the effect so someone who benefits unfairly in the speed might not need to do that much in the bouldering/lead to win the overall title, despite not being the best performer by any reasonable metric.

It's just a shit system. Hopefully it will be the last time it is used.
 
I'm pretty sure there us seeding for the spend round in combined finals? Based only on the pairings for the recent Euro Champs where I'm pretty sure the fastest four speed climbers in the final (based on combined qualis i think?) each faced one of the slowest four.
Partly why Bosi's first round race against Sascha (4th & 5th fastest in qualis if i remember correctly) was so crucial.

I still don't like the format though, i like the suggestion above of following a similar format to that used in track cycling - best of both worlds imo.
 
WillRobertson said:
I'm pretty sure there us seeding for the spend round in combined finals? Based only on the pairings for the recent Euro Champs where I'm pretty sure the fastest four speed climbers in the final (based on combined qualis i think?) each faced one of the slowest four.
Partly why Bosi's first round race against Sascha (4th & 5th fastest in qualis if i remember correctly) was so crucial.

I still don't like the format though, i like the suggestion above of following a similar format to that used in track cycling - best of both worlds imo.

Yes they do use seeding and that probably helps a bit, but there are still major descrepancies sometimes. To reuse my example from the other channel: in the pan american comp womens final, the climber with the second fastest time came 7th in the speed round, whereas the second slowest climber came 2nd - doesn't seem right to me when its so easy to implement a time trial system. The caveat here though is that there are a few reasons why people can win with a slow time, for example racing a much slower climber, the other climber falling or false starting - so in the head to head system climbers will not record their fastest times in every run.

From what Graeme posted on the other channel it sounds like the IFSC weren't allowed to change the rules by the Olympics people. Hopefully once the Olympics is over a better solution can be found (like not trying to combine speed with the other disciplines!).
 
In a slight defence of the current system, it does usually sort the climbers by time ~+/- 1 place. In Tolouse, the ranking was exactly the same whether you used head to head or time trial.
 
Teaboy said:
GraemeA said:
Ludo is a speed specialist but pretty much fluked his way to winning the World Championships in Hachioji.

How do you fluke your way to a World Championship?

He qualified in 10th, which is about par for him. Then in his 4 races in the final there was 1 FS and 2 falls (or visa versa) and in the other race there was a massive mistake by his opponent, or something like that.
 
teestub said:
bigironhorse said:
The only reason I can think of for the current format is that they think it makes it more entertaining.

Isn’t the current format how speed comps have been run for years or have they changed it for the Olympics?

there is a slight modification. In World Cups there are no run off's to dertermine 5th/6th or 7th/8th, qualification times are used.. In Olympic format these race are run so that all athletes do the same number of races.
 
Potash said:
Can anybody explain how the speed climbing pairing are determined?

I assume they are seeded in some way.

This must be based on a speed only seeding right?

Qualification times are used to determine the seeding. The theory is that the gold medal race is between 1st and 2nd fastest from the quals
 
In defense of speed.

It's a head to head event not a time trial.

Like the FA cup. You draw the eventual winner in the 3rd round and lose when otherwise you would've made it through to the final. well tough luck.

Sometimes the best don't make it and a plucky minnow does. That's what makes it so great.
 
If its so good, why don't we pair up the climbers for the bouldering and run it the same?

Its not the speed climbing that I object to per say, its the fact that its assessed using a totally different methodology. Its like doing a decathlon where pole vault and hurdles are head to head whilst the rest are standard.
 
Potash said:
If its so good, why don't we pair up the climbers for the bouldering and run it the same?

Its not the speed climbing that I object to per say, its the fact that its assessed using a totally different methodology.

Speed is clearly less similar to the other two... but IIRC Speed has quite a long standing history / series of competitions so the combined event is there because the IOC wouldnt allow climbing to have three separate events. (even though it would seem it would take just as long to run!!)
 
highrepute said:
In defense of speed.

It's a head to head event not a time trial.

Like the FA cup. You draw the eventual winner in the 3rd round and lose when otherwise you would've made it through to the final. well tough luck.

Sometimes the best don't make it and a plucky minnow does. That's what makes it so great.

I think that logic works OK when it's a standalone event - e.g. the FA Cup, where it doesn't really make a difference if you get knocked out in the 1st round or the QFs, you still haven't won.

The problem is that for a combined format, these placings do matter because they have a big impact on your overall score, and as others have pointed out the scoring system can be very unfair - performance doesn't necessarily correlate with position, and a poor performance by one athlete can disproportionately benefit another random competitor.
 
tomtom said:
the combined event is there because the IOC wouldnt allow climbing to have three separate events.

As I understand it (from a talk by the bloke who made the film Need for Speed from the 2018 Reel Rock) the IOC’s interest was purely in speed as they consider(ed) it to be the only discipline with any appeal to non-climbing spectators. The three-part format is a result of subsequent bargaining by the IFSC.
 
I guess they’ve considerably changed their tune since then as there’s 2 separate events for Paris I think (boulder lead combined plus speed)?
 
I imagine that the IFSC were just trying to get their foot in the door. Concede one Olympics with a rubbish system, and hope that in subsequent ones that climbing has been proved popular enough to have different medals (with Climbing growing in popularity perhaps they were happy to give it a couple of medal for Paris before seeing how it performed in Tokyo?).

I'd have thought they decided to have the Speed segment run like this is because that is how it has been done historically, and when the events are run under separate medals in the future it will be run in this format. Perhaps they are hesitant of introducing new viewers to a system and then having a different system in place in all other events/ future Olympics. Or maybe the Olympic committee refused to have the Speed format changed and demanded that Boulder & Lead be fit around it.

Whether this really justifies having a rubbish scoring system in place is another matter.
 
Good interview with Jacky Godoffe on route setting including his thoughts on the speed route

You created the universal speed climbing competition route—can you tell us more about it?

The idea of the speed route was to make something absolutely different from the rest of climbing. The unique holds are designed to be grabbed in three different ways, and they are supposed to be a caricature of a bird flying. [laughs] I don’t know if it’s that obvious, but, yes. I set the route in a couple of days, and in total with the hold design, I would say, it was done in three months. I think for how fast it was, it was cool.

Do you think they should change the speed competition route every now and then?

Oh, yes. It was not my idea at the time to create a route that lasted for 15 years or longer. When I was on the IFSC commission I asked them, maybe three or four times, to change it after five years or so. But now that every gym or team in the world has bought all these holds, I think they were probably afraid if they change everything it could be a mess. In my opinion, it should be changed to be more connected to our world now, because it exists in the world of 15 years ago.
 
Just caught up on the Combined Finals (and Combined Bouldering Qualies). Haven't read the thread. A few things stand out:

The climbing was generally great. A bit dynoey on M Boulder final but otherwise a lot of good entertaining climbing.

The whole Olympic pressure thing and people getting shuffled around as lead positions change was a bit grim to watch. It's an overly stressful aspect that I don't like as much as seeing people try really hard on really cool moves.

Speed being part of combined is still a massive pile of dick, including for the speed specialists.

#bringbackboscoe
 
Having watched a couple of combined comps, I think that the format works but only when the three rounds are distinct, not speed-Boulder-speed. The lead routes in finals were far too easy but why, was the lead wall too small, not steep enough or just a route setting mistake? I appreciate it must be hard to set a route where speed specialists can safely make it to the third clip without decking out, perhaps stop worrying and pull over the crash pads from the bouldering to make the start of the route safe.
 

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