The finals of the last stop on the 2010 Unified Bouldering Championships Pro Tour went down Saturday afternoon in Lincoln, NH at the Nor’easter presented by Eastern Mountain Sports. As is often the case in other sports, what transpired was an excellent reminder of why they “play the game” so to speak.
In qualifiers on Friday afternoon, Daniel Woods looked downright unstoppable flashing all 6 problems with ease. But as I said there is a reason they “play the game”, and by all accounts Woods was not at the top of his game during finals which opened the door for Ethan Pringle and Brian Kim to snag the top 2 spots with Woods taking 3rd. Pringle just eked past Kim as they both had 1 Flash and 2 Tops, however Pringle’s 8 attempts to Kim’s 9 gave Pringle the victory.
Pringle’s top finish was especially notable as this was his first major comp since suffering a devastating shoulder injury trying to stick a rose move dyno on Men’s #4 at 2009 ABS Nationals. Earlier this summer he did give several indications he was returning to top form with multiple hard sends during his trip to Australia, so it’s good to see his comeback come full circle.
Brian Kim on the other hand might just be the strongest climber you’ve never really heard much about. He’s certainly no slouch though with multiple 5.14s on his resume and this recent 5.13+ R trad FA in the Gunks.
For Woods the 3rd place finish was no doubt disappointing, but in an interview with the Outisde Magazine blog hours shortly before finals Woods had this to say when asked about the pressure associated with being expected to win:
But then it turned out that people would be like ‘Oh, you’re going to win, aren’t you?’ I didn’t think about it like that. When someone else tells it to you, you’re like, ooh, that’s weird, I’m expected now to win.
Honestly, there’s a lot of strong guys out there tonight. Anyone could take first, or second, or third. The point is you just go out and just rock climb. You go out confidently and try hard, and whatever the outcome is, the outcome is.
On the Women’s side of things the story was somewhat similar. Despite qualifying in 3rd place just about anyone who watched the Women’s qualifiers probably felt like Angie Payne, coming off a historic summer bouldering season, was the clear favorite as she effortlessly flashed the first 5 qualifiers before being stymied ever so slightly on problem #6. However, once finals began Alex Johnson came out and asserted her dominance, flashing all 3 problems on the way to victory. Francesca Metcalf and Angie Payne finished in what looks like a tie for 2nd with 1 Top and 1 Flash each.
| 2010 UBC Pro Tour At The Nor’easter Final Results | |
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Did you watch finals as they streamed live on the internet yesterday? If so, what did you think??
Update: Here’s a nice writeup from the perspective of a competitor that Angie Payne did for Five Ten’s blog. In it she clarifies that despite tying with Francesca Metcalf in Finals Metcalf took 2nd based on a countback to Qualifiers.
The stream was fantastic — quality-wise it was the best I’ve seen to date. The announcer got annoying quickly. Mute provided nice breaks. He was better than most though, I just don’t like that style of commentating… too distracting.
As for the climbing, it was pretty evident that when Woods couldn’t figure out Men’s #1 he was pretty flustered. He looked as if he knew he wouldn’t be able to win after not topping it. It wasn’t until #3 that he looked more like himself once the pressure of winning was off.
Kim is a beast though. I hope to see more of him in the future. He was a lot of fun to watch. Pringle was too, but he wasn’t near as much of a surprise.
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I thought Woods’ comment in the Outside interview about the style of the qualifiers problems was a bit prophetic. He said the qualifiers were a lot like problems on real rock and the static but powerful moves perfectly suited him. This was not the case in finals. The style of the first 2 finals problems really played against DW. He couldn’t figure out the beta on the technical first problem, got flustered and had more trouble with the double dyno to pinches than some of the taller competitors who could make the reach more easily. In fact, some didn’t even dyno. It was nice to seem him pull it together and get the send on number 3 since he could easily have mailed it in.
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Terry Paholek on the other, other hand might just be the sickest climber you’ve never really heard *anything* about…
Also that commentator needs to just shut up, i wanted to pull my ears clean off. He was just as bad at the other UBC comp I watched. everyone I know who has heard him has said the same thing, I just pray he gets the feedback then sets his ego and the mic down.
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Indeed. Anything you can add about Terry??
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Our boy has been crushing grips for years north of the border – always in contention for the Canadian comp title. Lives in Edmonton, AB and has an uncanny ability to stick to everything he gets his hands on.
One of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet too.
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I was trying to be a bit generous in my first post but I totally agree… the announcer was very annoying. I wonder how much the climbers could hear of him? He would always shout (or so it seemed) RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of a crux move. And, everyone was always “motoring” or “gunning”.
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The stream was great. Good quality, and I liked the way adverts were worked in. Seemed like progress to me. The announcer was fine, but was a bit pushy and louder at times than I would like. At times his talks of pushing the sport and what UCB was doing for climbing seemed a bit desperate. UBC is doing great work, and it shows itself – you don’t have to tell us what we can clearly see. I feel like they could get a great athlete to commentate, get the crowd worked up and explain what is happening to viewers who may have less knowledge of the sport – I’m just throwing it out there, but I’d nominate Joe Kinder. Always, always, always excited and good representation without the screaming. You don’t have to be loud to be stoked.
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doing live commentary is a gift and an art form. there are professionals who do sports commentary full time and manage to be terrible at it. the commentary for the UBC comps has not been “fine”, it has been awful- this is not the time to be polite and not hurt anyone’s feelings. if we really want to move competition climbing into the mainstream we need to stop this type of incredibly amateurish behaviour. get someone who knows what they’re doing or leave it be. have a couple of people doing “colour commentary” but for for the webcast, not over the comp speakers. one more “COME ON SON” and I’ll stop watching for good.
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Perhaps the key is to have separate people announcing for the crowd at home and for the crowd at the event?
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I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that Brian Kim, like Ethan, is pretty tall, and the finals problems were really reachy. Or DW got the ibuprofen and vicadin bottles mixed up.
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Maybe with more technical and less powerful problems woods will not always win as seen here. He is still the best and clearly the strongest climber but he probably does not have the best technique and problem reading skills. Also, a historic summer bouldering season had by Angie is meaningless in competition, 2 different sports. Sitting under outdoor V whatever for days or weeks and sending is way different than sending v7 in 5 minutes after climbing 2 v6’s.
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I think people tend to underestimate the technical abilities of Daniel Woods. He’s been climbing for what, 15 or 16 years at this point? In order to climb anywhere near the level that he does, he would need excellent technique. Perhaps he just had an off day, happens to everyone.
In terms of commentary, I think Timy O’Neill (?) does the live commentary at the Vail World Cup, and its been fantastic the past couple years.
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One of the things that really crystallized for me watching the comp this weekend is how much the style of the problems can dictate a winner for climbing comps. In other sports the best athlete is generally going to win regardless of the event because the contest remains the same (i.e. in track the distance is the same no matter the track you are running). Climbing is quite different in that over a small sample size of problems (in this case only 3 for UBC finals) the style could be such that the “best” climber might not win. Plus there is often so little room for error in bouldering comps in general (especially World Cups it seems), one foot slip could be the difference between 1st and not making the podium.
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Agreed on style/sample size dictating competition results. For example, if D Woods had topped one and two, it still wouldn’t have mattered. He lost the competition when he didn’t flash problem #1. I would like to see any finals be a minimum of 5 problems of increasing difficulty.
To continue the announcing discussion, if I was there live, that guy would have driven me nuts. I think the key is having commentary that is just that, commentary. Not some guy yelling the same things over and over again.
In what other sport does the announcer actively encourage/yell at the participants when they’re trying to focus? None that I can think of.
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In an ideal comp, the problems will cover many aspects of bouldering, and the winner will be the person with the greatest command of the broadest skillset.
I’m not sure who set for the UBC comps, i think i remember seeing Mechler’s name, but anyone who has been to, or watched World Cup comps will tell you that international routesetters are very different than north american routesetters in terms of style of problem – north american comps tend to showcase who can bear down and pull farther on the smaller grips. i would say this definitely does not always result in the “best climber” winning.
Having known an WC certified routesetter, i can assure you that incredible amounts of preparation go into every comp to try and ensure that they have set challenging and fair problems. I would imagine that the UBC crew is equally diligent, but not everyone can get it right all the time.
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Routsetting is hard. It takes a huge amount of thought to make sure the moves are possible, yet difficult, and equally accessable to all diferent body geometry’s. there’s just too many variables to get it right every time consistently, and boulders are so short that it’s hard to have one problem that’s a good metric for a wide range of skills. because boulders have so few moves I think they’re each is bound to favor a particular style. not too much to be done about it.
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