The Battle in the Bubble comp went off Saturday night in Boulder, CO and fans watching both online and in person at the Boulder Reservoir were treated to quite a show. The comp culminated in an exciting head to head finals with Daniel Woods besting Julian Bautista for the men and Alex Puccio snatching victory from a very game Angie Payne.
| Men’s Results | Women’s Results |
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The format used differed from most climbing comps in that finals started with 10 climbers and after each problem some competitors were eliminated. As the night progressed the field was whittled down from the original 10 to 6 then to 4 then to 3 and then the final 2. The final 2 faced off in a “1st ascent” format where they traded off 5 attempts with the first climber topping out the problem winning the comp. This made for an exciting final, particularly on the women’s side, as Angie Payne nearly sent on 2 consecutive attempts as Alex Puccio initially struggled before latching the finish hold to secure the win. Daniel Woods had things well in control on the Men’s side, setting an early highpoint of the last hold that Bautista could never match. (Similar to ABS Nationals this year, Woods sent the problem after the comp ended had been decided)
While exciting to watch, the online broadcast was not without its problems. The audio was off the entire night, first behind by 10 seconds and then ahead by a few seconds. There was also a lot of downtime during the comp pushing the running time to over 2 and a half hours (and the end time to almost 11 pm CST) which was a bit too long for me. The resolution of the live feed was also lacking which made the high quality (and much appreciated) graphics used on the feed very difficult to read.
Despite theses drawbacks I think the Battle in the Bubble was another step in the right direction as far as broadcasting comps to the masses is concerned. The problems were exciting to watch, the action was easy to follow and there were plenty of positive developments to build on for future comps.
Additional reviews of the event from people who attended are available at The Spot’s Blog, B3Bouldering and Mountains & Water. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments if you were at the comp or watched online.
I’ll be sure to update this post with any additional reviews or media as they become available…
Update: There was a slight mix up with the initial results I posted. Chauncenia Cox actually finished in 4th followed by Flannery Shay-Nemirow and not vice versa.
Update #2: Check out this gallery of shots from finals by Ben Fullerton
Daniel sent the last problem on his 5th and final try, not AFTER the comp was over…
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True I suppose. Although he didn’t need to climb anymore to win the comp correct? Either way it was a good way to close the show!
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agreed narc. Dan Howley made it very clear that the comp was over and that Daniel had won. Then he went over to Daniel and asked him if he’d like to give it another shot to finish it off. This would be when he said yes and then crushed it. But Narc is right. Had he not tried it again he still would have won.
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I would really like to see the live feed re-posted for later viewing by people who missed it live. Since I was in Shelf Rd this weekend (climbing > watching climbing) I’d love to see something like this. I think you should use your pull in the climbing parts of the interwebs to make this happen. Can’t be hard right? Just post a series of clips to Youtube.
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That would be a very good idea and one that is presumably not that hard to implement.
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Ditto Lipinski. Shouldn’t be difficult to record the live feed on site, post in the next couple days. We don’t need a pretty version, and the sponsors should be happy with getting more airtime.
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The first 20 mins of the feed was pretty much broken (it started buffering nonstopped after a single frame loaded).
Later on the feed was better, but still a lot of buffering & refreshing the page was require for me to view it.
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It would have been nice to have watched it, but I guess with a Mac, it just doesn’t work. I was okay in BootCamp though, until it didn’t like the streaming and promptly BSOD’d all over the place. So I gave up.
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Worked without a hitch on our Macbook 🙂
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I found that with the UBC comp it worked on my Mac with Firefox but not with Safari. And we have plans to get a bunch of video back out there, so don’t despair. Thanks for watching guys!!!
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Hey, great write up! And thanks for the link to my blog. Keep up the good reportage and keep an eye out for my photos of the World Cup in Vail in two weeks! Cheers!
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The live feed video is currently being edited by Sender Films and should be out very soon. They were aiming to have it out Sunday by noon by seeing as they called me yesterday to get another copy of the graphics I put together I am assuming they are running into some difficulties and it will be out whenever its done 🙂
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Thanks! Good to know.
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I just checked after I left that comment (should have checked before) and the highlight reel is right here: http://www.thespotgym.com/ there is a link on the right side of the page. Its labeled as a highlight reel so its not the entire live video feed. I don’t know if they are gonna through that up or not . . .
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yeah that highlight reel is weak. BUT! As stated in the end of the video a full recap is coming!
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Nice work on those graphics Jordan. The little interlude animations were a nice effect!
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Thanks Narc! Hopefully I’ll get to do some more! I’m just getting warmed up.
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I agree on archiving the stream for on-demand viewing. I’ve gotten lots of mileage in the past watching that Canadian comp that was streamed a year or so ago plus some world cup lead comps. There will be bandwidth costs the organizers/sponsors will have to pay, but even keeping the broadcast available for a few weeks would be well appreciated and generate additional interest, which then increases excitement for the next streamed event, and so on.
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