Pygmalion- How a greek myth effects british sports climbing standards

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Johnny Brown said:
There's an interesting bit in (I think) Deep Play by Paul Pritchard, where he talks about the levels of unemployment and the morality of removing oneself from the competition for the few jobs available.

:lol: Moral justification for doing fuck-all but climb. What a hero. 'Leave me, save yourselves!'
 
There is more press given to trad climbing because there is more to celebrate

I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to trad, so sorry if this is sounds either offensive or stupid, but I don't really know how UK trad compares to the stuff abroad and how our trad achievements compare to our sport ones on their respective scales of difficulty. For example, I don't really know how a repeat of Captain Invincible or Equilibrium compares to Recovery Drink (Nico Favresse' route in Greenland I think... I recall hearing 8c+/9a trad?) and where they sit on the 'trad' scale.

So can anyone in the know try and compare just how world class we are at trad compared to sport? Are repeats of 20 odd year old trad routes any more impressive than repeats of 20 odd year old sport routes? Because that's sort of where it seems like the majority of hard climbers in the UK are at, barring a few harder FA in both disciplines.

As an example, Caff repeated The Big Bang, 9a and has openly admitted that it took a lot of effort over a period of months. He then repeated Indian Face in an afternoon? Maybe two? I'm pretty sure that the latter was more celebrated despite this.

Sorry for being slightly off topic.
 
Might be a stretch...

How does UK trad/trad ascents by UK climbers compare to the rest of the world then? Leading the pack?
 
bendavison said:
As an example, Caff repeated The Big Bang, 9a and has openly admitted that it took a lot of effort over a period of months. He then repeated Indian Face in an afternoon? Maybe two? I'm pretty sure that the latter was more celebrated despite this.

Ben I guess this comes back to being able to tell stories as JB eluded to earlier; it makes for more of an article returning to a wall where you very nearly died a decade before to repeat one of the seminal trad routes of the UK. Compared to this going on a diet and doing a lot of deadhanging lacks a certain amount of interest for the masses!

http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/item.php?id=63370

http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=5736
 
Stubbs said:
bendavison said:
As an example, Caff repeated The Big Bang, 9a and has openly admitted that it took a lot of effort over a period of months. He then repeated Indian Face in an afternoon? Maybe two? I'm pretty sure that the latter was more celebrated despite this.

Ben I guess this comes back to being able to tell stories as JB eluded to earlier; it makes for more of an article returning to a wall where you very nearly died a decade before to repeat one of the seminal trad routes of the UK. Compared to this going on a diet and doing a lot of deadhanging lacks a certain amount of interest for the masses!

http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/item.php?id=63370

http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=5736

You mean most people aren't interested in deadhanging? What do they do in their spare time then? :shrug:

That is a good point. I've certainly had more people interested in how I injured myself in Norway rather than what I climbed there. Good interviews and videos etc do go a good way to making sport ascents more interesting, people do seem interested in the process.
 
Exactly! Although Flatanger certainly lends itself to more interesting sports vids than a lot of venues. Imagine the article you'll be able to write about your ascent of Little Badder next year, you should make a Rocky style montage of your recovery!
 
bendavison said:
I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to trad, so sorry if this is sounds either offensive or stupid, but I don't really know how UK trad compares to the stuff abroad

I'll take the bait :worms: :worms: - flame me as an ignorant punter if you like

I personally wasn't thinking so much about repeats of twenty year old British routes, and I understand the general irritation at Indian Face Syndrome. But I have the impression that Pete and Tom are going around other countries repeating & putting up cutting edge routes, and that Hazel is in the top handful of international lady tradders.

See also Caff & Co on the Salathe - ok freed 20-odd years ago but still doesn't get done every week, so at least a bit newsworthy. There are plenty of 15 to 20 year old sport routes, repeats of which still seem to be at least somewhat newsworthy too: Realisation, AD, Hubble etc.
 
For example, I don't really know how a repeat of Captain Invincible or Equilibrium compares to Recovery Drink (Nico Favresse' route in Greenland I think... I recall hearing 8c+/9a trad?) and where they sit on the 'trad' scale.

They don't really, apples and oranges. Nico's efforts on granite can be compared to Tom R and Pete's exploits though: If you read Tom's blog he has a go: http://tomrandallclimbing.wordpress.com/2014/06/30/the-pura-pura-project/

Favresse and them have done some similar stuff like Greenspit but he has also done 9a and big walls, whereas they've basically repeated all the supposed hardest cracks in the world. Be interesting to see how they get on on El Cap.

You can't really have a sensible discussion about Indian Face. It is like catnip to UKC and nearly thirty years old, not twenty. Interesting how hard Meltdown turned out to be though, shame Johnny never did it.

Likewise I don't think it's worth trying to compare grit routes with elsewhere. It's worth noting Equilibrium stopped the yanks and Andrada dead, but Pearson did it quickly. And Nico put on a good show in Wales but left the gritstone with his pants round his ankles.

Until Echo wall is repeated we probably won't know what the hardest trad climb in the world is. And Caff will probably downgrade it anyway...
 
Recovery drink is in Norway on Profilveggen. I asked Mr Favresse about the route, and he claimed it was really very hard for him, it took two trips and lots of attempts
 
Interesting discussion for sure, but can people stop saying 'sports climbing', it makes me twitch almost as much as when I read that people are going climbing in the 'Peaks', or that they 'smashed' a route (what? - broke the holds off?).

Sport climbing (with no second 's' will do just fine).
 
Stubbs said:
Exactly! Although Flatanger certainly lends itself to more interesting sports vids than a lot of venues. Imagine the article you'll be able to write about your ascent of Little Badder next year, you should make a Rocky style montage of your recovery!

That could be brilliant. Not sure how good my Rocky impression is though, but I could pretend that the training 'secret' is punching big pieces of meat and running up stairs.

Thanks for the replies Muenchener and JB. It does sound like there are British climbers who have climbed trad at the highest level of their niche (this isn't meant to sound belittling, I'm aware different styles/areas of sport climbing are niche - I avoid pockets like the plague and love edges/pinches but its all sport).

I suspect that in a few years UK sport climbing will be doing pretty well in the pecking order too - not at the top, but a handful of 9a-9a+ climbers and hopefully Steve will have done his Malham project which sounds like 9b. Its logical that having more people climbing at that level, so presumably more news reports about them, that the youths will raise their expectations if they're not already aiming for 9c.
 
Oh, and by the way, I heard similar grumblings from French acquaintances. (Why are we crap at climbing? The reason most frequently heard it that the best french climbers are lazy and don't train enough.)
 
Except the French stats don't back up the French grumblings - they're just that, grumblings.
Whereas the Brit stats, if anyone could be bothered to trawl through below 9a+ (and remove boulder travs/myths) somewhat back up the Brit grumblings.
 
Whilst they have a lot of 9a climbers I can see why they might feel they are behind as they only have 4 9a+ climbers (if you dont count Akira as 9b).

Like has been said a few times i dont think the world outside of the UK sees 9a as that hard any more.

Based purely on difficulty (redpoint and onsight,)and not quantity they are behind the Czechs, Germans, spanish, norwegians, americans.
 
gme said:
Based purely on difficulty (redpoint and onsight,)and not quantity they are behind the Czechs, Germans, spanish, norwegians, americans.

i.e. Ondra, Megos, Ramon (?), Midtbo and the almighty Shamra (who is basically Spanish now)?

It's not as if the countries you've listed have masses of 9b climbers or 9a onsighters!

Didn't Ondra say that Overshadow could be 9b? THat way you'd be able to add the UK to that list too!
 
I only said that i can see why they might think they are under performing due to not having a top climber or someone climbing the top two grades.
 

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