Inside the Circuit
Anyone has an idea for naming. I've just gone with a very boring Inside Climbing Podcast mostly because that's what Patrick, who was The USA head of communications, was like, hey. I wanna listen to that thing after we did the seoul ones. I was like, okay. I will name it that because that's what people will search for.
Rory:It was climbing in the title, which is always good for SEO, so that helps. But if it's just us three doing things, I'm more than happy, like I think it'd be cool to change the name and have it be something different for which I would like, inside the circuit would be, I think, a cool name. There are podcasts called that already, which are unsurprisingly ready to elect electrics and other things, which are more circuit related. But I think as we're all of us have been around comps for a while, having something related to the circuit and how it used to be called before the modern thing would be kind of cool. Yeah.
Rory:I think Eddie's blessing a little bit to like
Tyler:I'm sure
Natalie:it'd be fine.
Rory:I'm sure it would be since he's mostly, like, gone off into his own world.
Natalie:He actually posted about it today, didn't he? He shared a paper.
Tyler:He did. Yeah. Yeah. No. He absolutely does not have the rights to the term circuit, but I can also imagine him being mad about it if somebody did start using it.
Rory:I might just message him and go, hey, we tell Natalie are looking to do this thing. He went on he was on plastic weekly a few times, so I'm sure he'll understand.
Tyler:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I as I've said, I'm I'm now in my Eddie arc where I'm on my way out, but people still think I'm relevant and have any valuable thoughts. So I'm just being invited to podcasts for no reason.
Tyler:But title wise, think like I think you have a really strong name because, you know, the Instagram account has been around for now, like years and people know what that means. So unless you think of something like amazing for the podcast, I wouldn't change it. But you do you do you.
Rory:We can keep it and it can always change as needed.
Tyler:Yeah. I was trying to think of like, man, what what were the names I was thinking of for Plastic Weekly when we started? And I think I think like I think it was stuff like four plus or like a I I really wanted to do a format called five on five off where it was basically a debate format where it was like, k. Five minutes, you talk about this angle on something. In case somebody else gets five minutes.
Tyler:And that really sucked. I think I did one with with Albert Oak one time just to try it out. And five minutes is too long to let one person talk with no interruptions. It's like, What if we try like five minutes for an entire topic and we we both talk in those five minutes? It's just a rapid fire show, but I I couldn't find a way to enjoy it.
Tyler:So anyway, unless you wanna use four plus, which again, not a creative name and terrible SEO.
Rory:PCL didn't remind me how much I like the four plus format and how nice format that is.
Tyler:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Rory:Yeah. It's just nice when you have all that pressure and they know they can't that this is their last go, and they put everyone just put so much effort into it. Feels like at least for world climbing for Eurosport, it's such a tight constraint. They're just gone, decided. We don't like, we want everything to be as dependent and as short as possible.
Rory:So Mhmm. Yeah. So I think that's yeah. So they say sometimes even cut out the the very few athlete interviews they actually do as well. Think I hate to be on max.
Natalie:Yeah. When I complain about the two climbers at the same time thing because I was doing my head a bit in like, I I don't know why. Maybe it's just because I haven't watched them for a while. It just it felt like I just wanted the drama of, like, the one problem at a time rather than having to focus on two different climbers and two different problems of where the schools were at. Yeah, I'll I'll complain about that in the podcast.
Rory:Oh, so we're gonna chat chat about climbing now.
Natalie:Yeah.
Rory:I guess it makes sense to talk in chronological orders, like chatting about Keqiao and then Wujiang .
Tyler:Yeah.
Rory:Yeah. Who wants to kick off talking about Keqiao?
Tyler:My biggest take about Kachao is specifically men's number four and the zone was in the wrong spot. Maybe we save that save that a couple topics.
Natalie:Yeah. Very specific.
Tyler:Really, it was it was nice to watch climbing again. Like it was it was something I watched on replay. I didn't watch any of it live. I'm not trying to do, you know, World Cups in Asia live anymore. It's just too, too much for me, especially during the nice weather months.
Tyler:It's a pleasure to especially see so many of the faces that we were we were, you know, excited about at the end of last year. And then, of course, the results and stuff left us with lots of excitement too. So it was a it was a thumbs up competition for me all around for sure.
Natalie:I think the, yeah, the excitement around climbing in China and Asia in general, as we know, is that really came across just like the fans. The audience just seemed really invested, and the athletes seemed to really like it there as well. So, yeah, just it was nice to start off the series in a place with so much energy and excitement.
Rory:Really nice to see the energy. It did seem like, I don't know if it's Bilibili or whether it's one of the other sort of channels that put a lot of effort into the creators covering and talking to climbers and producing lots of content on the side, which was ending up on Bilibili and this is essentially YouTube in China. It did feel like they were putting a lot of effort in to make it a lot bigger. Like, the IFSE world climbing, they were like, last year, they put a lot of effort into start growing it, and I think getting the Bilibili contract was maybe the result of that. And it really showed how much energy there was.
Tyler:And it
Rory:was really and you they streamed qualifications with commentary, which was kind of crazy because that doesn't normally happen. It was all in Chinese, obviously, but they it was there, which was kinda cool. It just feel like there was a lot of energy. People are really psyched for beginning of the season. And having a Boulder World Cup as the beginning one as well, which is the one climbers care the most about.
Rory:And so it was really cool just to see how invested everybody one one was. One of the things which I find really interesting in bouldering right now is I feel like the script has been flipped between men and women's. It felt like for years and years and years, like, the men's was a complete crapshoot, and you had no clue who was gonna win. And any and it was there was no storylines. There was, like, no dominance.
Rory:And now you have this lovely story arc of Sarato Anraku, who is, once a generational talent, and then him, Mejji, and Do Young are all fighting it out, and it's just a lot of fun to watch. Whilst in the women's, it feels like it's becoming a bit of a crapshoot. Mhmm. And like anyone, like, so many different athletes have a chance of winning. And like last year, we had six different winners, and it's just all a bit crazy.
Rory:Mhmm.
Natalie:Yeah. I think it's really cool. We got the same three men that we had in the world championships. So that podium just switched up a little, but they're definitely more dominant than, you know, other athletes have been in previous seasons. Whereas the women's, as you say, it used to always be so just much more predictable, but, yeah, it definitely wasn't hasn't been the last season.
Natalie:And in Keqiao, it was, like, right down to the wire. Like, who's gonna win? Like, which position are people in? And but it did make it quite exciting even though was very confusing and sort of a bit all over the place with the schools and and the route setting.
Tyler:This goes for Wujiang as well, but for Keqiao if if you're excited about, like, the the the the how dynamic the women's field is, Natalia Grossman's still not here. Brooke Rabatu's still not here. If you're an Iamori fan, you know, she's not in this finals. It it could have been like there is the potential for a really, like, stunning field, especially if you're one of those people that believes that Yanya is now, like, in a dip of some kind, which I don't. But, like, this field is really incredible.
Tyler:Same thing for Lee, like, just a a really excellent set of athletes. I was excited like three, four years ago when you started to see, oh, hey, there's a new generation where there's, you know, a top five set of women all of whom can medal on any particular day. And it's because they're all strong, not because, you know, they're all just of a similar level. It's all like they're all pushing the boundary. And especially now with with Annie regularly up there, Aaron up there, and the Abizu or Azalea specifically, I guess.
Tyler:Even Oceana Mackenzie, and I mean, I I I am, like, I'm not a hater, but I am a doubter. But seeing her back to back in two of these comps, it's okay. You're a regular name, like, more and more frequently, and and it's a it's a cool set of climbers that we get to see. And it's nice to have that, like, on the men's side. The first part of the Yanya era, once once the the people she had conquered fell away, there's a a bit of a vacuum, and it was just Yanya and whoever else.
Tyler:But now it feels like we've actually got a a nice set of people to make the comps interesting. Even though she is still the best, and and these will be her only losses this season guaranteed a 100%.
Natalie:You're a Janja stan.
Tyler:Yeah. I don't know. I'm I I I am I am simultaneously a Janja hater and a Janja stan somehow. But, yeah. No.
Tyler:It was a it was an excellent call. I think it's worth just talking about that and talking about Janja Garnbret coming in second. So I didn't watch it live. Did did either of you guys watch it live? Rory, you did.
Tyler:What was the vibe when when it became clear that she, like, wasn't gonna win this? Was was there just like a a a vacuum in the air of, like, oh my god. The era is over. The goat has fallen, or was it a bit more measured and reasonable?
Rory:I think it was just chaos because, like, we worked out on the Discord way before Matt did worked out that, oh, Zélia is one if Oriane didn't top it and Orianne got nowhere on the boulder. It was a really cool boulder boulder for the women's because it was it was a it looked really long. Like, it did one of the things in Cachau. There were some looked like there was long boulders. It was like the last one really looked like because it was really compression y, really powerful in steep roof.
Rory:It's, like, six degrees overhanging. Like, the Keqiao walls, one of the steeper and also one of the taller walls, I think, on the circuit. They really played with that. Supposedly, there was this theme idea, which really just means that the instead of having the weird odd one out boulder in the finals, they just have another theme boulder, which meant we had a second power boulder here, which became which looked really like power endurance y. Like, that whole route looked like a lead boulder.
Rory:It looked like a boulder which would suit lead climbers. And surprisingly, Zélia, who's also a really good lead climber, really well on it, and Jania did really well on it. I'm surprised Annie didn't do as well on it. That's the one thing in the women's field I was surprised by. And it was really selective as well because only Zélia and Janja got to the zone and going topped it, and no one else got got anything on the boulder.
Natalie:When I so I watched it live as well, but was slightly I was doing something else. Was like working at the same time, not fully, like, following the the scores. But even before then, when they showed us the boulders, I thought number one, the sort of green run and jump coordination boulder. I was like, oh, that looks easier. That looks like a sort of warm up, get into the competition thing.
Natalie:And then number four, I was like, yeah, that looks like the hardest boulder. But apparently, the route setters had said they thought number one would be the hardest. And then, yeah, I got it completely wrong because nobody obviously topped this coordination boulder that looked quite easy, and then we had some tops on number four. The slab boulder was a shame. It was a bit of a write off.
Natalie:And the number two as well, just a sort of odd mix of boulders that were, like, too hard, not enough tops, and then too easy.
Rory:Yeah. It was a weird kind of round because if you look at them above tops, it's like slap bang in the middle of, like, the distribution of, like, all tops. But it's because you had two hard ones and two ones which are too easy, you ended up with this weird dichotomy of people complaining about the boulders being too easy despite the fact there's only two boulders had two tops between them in total. The zone was too easy on the first one. The no.
Rory:It didn't really select or do that much work, which kind of an which I think people felt frustrated by. And Osh was the only one who really looked close on the first boulder in my eyes on that coordination. And she is quite a bit taller than She's a of athletes. So I'm wondering whether it was just that little bit too far. It was a long way on that second sort of part of the coordination.
Tyler:Yeah. And it should just be noted that, you know, as just being the first World Cup of the season, it means that everybody's just trying to get their bearings, and so I I don't stress too much about the route setting. Like, this was all the boulders were basically on the mark. Like, all of them were toppable. One was, like, a little bit too hard with given, you know, just that time limit.
Tyler:But no. Otherwise, I thought they were great boulders. Yeah. Number four was was was an interesting, like, you know, a final little crucible to test them on. And and I think, you know, obviously, just coming down to to attempts, I don't I'm I'm not gonna read very much into the fact that Yanya comes slightly in second place.
Tyler:But, I think it was, like I I don't know. Do you guys disagree that it was, like, a relatively well rounded round? You know, I I'm okay with there being another power boulder in it. That works for me. Because if the first power boulder was problem number two, which was kinda broken, that's like if I have a complaint about a boulder, it's it's problem number two.
Tyler:I think having problem number four there as a as a actual test of, okay, you've just done three boulders. Can you still squeeze? Can you still keep your body together? I thought it was a great one. So I don't know.
Tyler:I like good round all, altogether.
Natalie:Yeah. I think it was good. I think they were just unlucky in that. I think they expected more tops on the first one and just that move is just overcooked.
Tyler:Yeah.
Natalie:The only thing I would say, like, I'm getting a bit bored of, like, teetery slabs in the women's. Like, I just think that they're very doable, like, the older women are pretty good at them now. And most of the time, it just comes down to, like, mental strength and having not not praying that they don't have foot slips and stuff. And I just don't think it's that exciting. Like, I look at some of the men's slabs, and they've got, you know, more dynamic moves like slopers.
Natalie:It's not always the case for the women, but I just feel like we're seeing them quite a lot where it's like, oh, a step through on screw ons. And I just I wanna see more interesting, like, comp style slaps.
Rory:Mhmm.
Natalie:And probably Janja does too because they're always, like, relatively easy. And if she's got toe issues, I think it's definitely where her head's kind of not in the right place at the moment on those kind of technical things.
Tyler:The think my only frustration is I am getting a little annoyed that boulders are are getting purified into this essence of like, okay, this is, you know, the the walk through slab boulder, and this is the power steep boulder. Like, I don't I it's not really my goal for bouldering to become gymnastics where there's discrete events of different skill sets and, know, alright. Let's see the ladies do the barre. Let's see the ladies do the beam and all that stuff. Like, that's not really what I'm hoping for.
Tyler:I would love it if we could get these a little mixed up so each boulder can, you know, up to zone is is that teetery slab, and then you finish off with with some just like, you know, big compression climbing. I don't know. That's that's the only thing that bothers me is when I can look at a boulder and distill immediately, like, okay. This is a particular skill set. So, yeah, when it reaches that area, then, yeah, I agree completely.
Rory:It was cool to see Emma actually in a final though, Emma Edward.
Natalie:Yeah. She did really well, like, after Prague getting rained out of the final.
Rory:Probably would have wished because she's really, really good at coordination. Wish for that coordination being a little bit easier so she had a she could have maybe had a chance of doing it. Because that is the that's the problem to your point, Tyler, is that when you get this discretized kind of styles and you feel really good at one style and if that part is slightly off, then you don't have any other chance. It's be nice if they could mix things up a bit more. Which they were trying to do at one point.
Rory:They're trying to, like, mix styles more in order to kind of shake athletes athletes are sort of off and kind of get them to have to adapt more rather than just this is this is the style. Let's see if you can execute on this style and kind of introduce that a bit more complexity into the into the boulders.
Natalie:When I first saw the boulders, I definitely I was like, oh, there's a slab and there's a coordination like Emma will do really well. Like, it's her kinda round. It's just a shame. Was just didn't quite go away. But, yeah, I do think more variety, like, within that individual boulders themselves would be good.
Natalie:So we're not sort of pigeonholing people and styles into individual boulders.
Rory:Do wanna talk about the zone on M 4, Tyler?
Tyler:On men's four?
Rory:On men's four.
Tyler:Yeah. Sure. I think I think like pretty if if you have so many of the men get that deep into the boulder completely unrewarded, and then anyone who does get to the zone manages to get to the top quite easily, I think you just put it in the wrong spot. I'm not coming at this possibly from a Mejdi stand perspective where maybe that would have made a huge difference in his points and how he finished the cup. Pretend pretend that's not in my in in my justification.
Tyler:But, yeah, it was just a it's I think they incorrectly estimated where the crux of that boulder was going to be. They obviously didn't expect the the traverse sequence to be that hard. I think the zone should have been somewhere around the little pockets and not after that because the top was a flyer and and it really didn't make much impact in separating anybody. It was all the moves down below. And I think it would have shaken up the podium a little bit.
Tyler:And it it's it was one of those things where the only reason I bring it up is because as you're watching it, you feel like I feel like the the climbers who, you know, earned the moves, who actually, you know, got further in this boulder actually didn't get rewarded properly for it. And it it just leaves that, like, little sour taste in your mouth. Honestly, most of the time, you can get away with that with weird, you know, zone placements. But because it's the final boulder and everybody now has in their heads, you know, it's easy to do the scoring math of who's gonna podium when you're on the last boulder. So when that zone is in a weird spot, everybody's doing that math and and realizing like, oh, this kinda like just feels bad.
Tyler:It's in the wrong spot. If you did that on boulder number one, nobody would care. But on zone four, when everybody's dialed in and they know what everybody needs, you're just watching you're watching Tomoa just like crush through move after move after move and really difficult moves but getting nothing for it as it turns out. So that felt a little bit, you know, yucky in the mouth and would have shaken things up a little bit on the podium but that's just that's how it goes. The people that won, obviously, super deserving.
Tyler:It just would have been, like, maybe a minor order shake up. But, yeah, that was my my one tepid take from, from the men's final.
Rory:Because they had the same sort of thing on men's too as well, the crimpfest as well. Yeah. And that the zone was really high and that you have spent quite a bit of effort to be able to go through those crimps to get into that.
Tyler:Yeah. That's what I'm saying. It was in the earlier part of the rounds. Didn't bother me at all.
Rory:And then no one really managed to do anything at the top section on that one. Mhmm.
Natalie:Yeah. It was like a route that that green Yeah. But it's very old school. It's quite cool.
Rory:It's also really long. I don't know whether that's just because of the the height or if it's because they're on the steeper sections and that just led to the boulders becoming the top end of the move kind of limit because the I I like, world climbing has limits on how many handholds can be in a boulder, and they have recommendations on how long it should be. Because it's, 12, I think, is the max, which they say a boulder should be, and eight is, like, the average. Six, I think, being the lowest, something like that. And so Is
Tyler:it I'm I'm I don't wanna put anybody on the spot asking about rules, but is are they counting moves or are they counting holds the way they
Rory:used I believe.
Tyler:They're still counting holds in the rules. Yeah. So I'm guessing they're still doing the thing where multiple grips on a volume counts as a single handhold because that was the way you'd get around it in the past. And that climb was all just, you know, big volumes with, like, multiple crimps on them. Right?
Tyler:So you're making, like, small ticky tack power moves. But yeah. No. I thought it was a good like, the men's round, I thought was actually another, like, very good well rounded, round for climbing. It didn't leave me, like, wanting anything necessarily.
Tyler:I enjoyed it. It's good boulders and and all that stuff. Yeah. Nice nice bunch of styles. Was nice to see some climbers look cocky and excited on one boulder and then just like, you know, like, what did I waste all of my training season for when they get to the next boulder?
Tyler:It keeps it exciting and gets everybody back in the mind space of like, oh, yeah. World Cups should, you can't you can't show up with a small set of tools. Like, you gotta bring everything. I thought it was a good, a good wake up round.
Rory:Yeah. And the men's also ended in the kind of the perfect way you kind of want, which is the last athlete comes out and has to talk to win, which was awesome as well with Serato. It's what we need more of. And, like, it's awesome just having that Serato, Dohyan, Majdi kind of, like, triple, and it's having that competition. And you can kinda see them sitting, like, when Dohyan did it the first time did that boulder, it was after so this is, the one benefit which the world climbing kind of format has over something like PCL is that you get to see so many athletes struggling on this thing, and then you have someone who's good in that style comes out and crushes it.
Rory:And it just looks so impressive, And it gives you that context which you don't get when you don't have multiple athletes on the same boulder.
Natalie:I was also really impressed with the Chinese climbers, Xuanpu Bai and Yufei Pan. Like, it was cool to have two home crowd guys in it, and I think there's quite a lot in the semifinals as well. Good depth of field. But it'd be interesting to see if they do as well in other World Cups, if they're doing a full circuit or not. I'm not sure.
Tyler:Yeah. It was a great mix. I it it's a little hard mentally to think of Jongwon Chan as, like, the veteran in the round, but it was great to have him there. And for for, you know, a couple minutes, it looked like he would be relevant to the scores and stuff. It was cool getting to see him and Dohyun Lee climbing at the same time as well.
Tyler:Like, just what a great, like, mix of mix of athletes. It was a fun it felt like a change up. It felt fresh. Yeah. No complaints.
Tyler:And, of course, always happy to see Tomoa actually, like, you know, sending boulders. That feels great, when he's doing that. So good round.
Rory:So let's move on to Wujiang. Janja surprises everyone by coming second again. I don't know how many people, would have predicted Yanya not winning a gold medal in either World Cup. I would not have been one of those people. No.
Rory:It doesn't happen very often. I think I went and looked up her win rates, and she's like, she's she's like a 75% win rate in oh, since 2020, and it's like just under if you go further back, her dominance didn't really start until, like, 2018, twenty nineteen twenty eighteen, '19 in
Tyler:terms of winning a lot of
Rory:World Cup. She lost quite a few at the beginning, and surprisingly, when she was our first year or two. Still, like, yeah, she's lost to she's only lost to I and now Annie in lead since 2020. And she's only lost three in Boulder, which is the Natalia, Zélia, and Oriane. Yeah.
Rory:Different world cups. All on attempts.
Tyler:The world's most valuable scalp is is is saying you can beat Janja in an actual competition considering she only shows up to so many. Yeah. That's pretty sweet.
Rory:So it was and Annie climbed really well on that route. She was yeah. Like, Yanya struggled a bit in semis. Janja was quite far down coming out in finals. And he clearly was a lot better in semis and deserves to win on cow pack.
Rory:Felt that Janja would have had a better chance of doing that top move maybe, but it did look like I don't know what happened. It looked like she misjudged it and just completely fell off.
Natalie:Yeah. I think the big last hold was, like, this massive sphere. And if you were underneath it, you couldn't see where the sphere rounded, where the actual hold was. So I think Jania looked where the where the foothold was and sort of estimated roughly where the good hand bit was and just didn't get it quite right. But I did think she still she did rush it slightly, which is a shame.
Natalie:And Annie, I think, did exactly the same. Like, it it was a weird move because it was quite blind, I think, to go to the good bit. But it's a shame as well because it it was definitely I was saying, oh, this is a really hard route. Jan, you'll be happy. The bottom of the route did look quite hard, like, through that section, like, where Erin fell.
Natalie:And then it looked like it got easier on the head walk because where Annie was shaking out for ages and resting. It looked like it was too easy. You could just recover too much, and then it was kind of fine until the last move, which is a shame. But, yeah, I think Jania would have preferred a slightly harder headwall.
Tyler:I I think it was pretty much, like, an ideal ideal round to watch. I thought it super cool. Yeah. I think Yanya like Yanya on that last move, I think she rested as much as could be reasonable. Like, you know, I'm not I don't think I've ever experienced the sensation of actually getting strength back while while resting on the wall.
Tyler:I rest on the wall because people tell me I'm supposed to. I don't think it's ever actually worked for me. So when I just see them sitting there, I'm like, you're surely you're faking it. Like that's that can't be real. But anyway, she she rested and then she went for the finish hold with as much confidence as you can expect anybody.
Tyler:Like, I don't think she had any doubts in her mind that she was about to stick that with her hand and that pull from the hand hold was gonna finish up the momentum to get her feet to the to the big purple foothold and then it would be done. And you can see the moment where her hand with a 100% confidence closes around the hold, but the hold is not there. It's it's a few inches further and and, yeah. Brutal finish, but that's a feeling I think most of us know from our, you know, our, you know, gym climbing And you got got and, you know, it as it turns out, it's by count back, but that's because you didn't perform on the level in the previous rounds. I'm so glad it didn't come down to time.
Tyler:I know I think that's the first lead cup of the year is always a mess for everybody remembering how scoring works. But, yeah, I'm really glad it went back to countbacks because I think that's a lot more satisfying than Janja. I I don't think Yany would be very satisfied taking this win on countback because I think that kind of move where you're you're revved up for the finish, you go for it and you just make a genuine error. You could tell she wasn't very happy with that and that that was pretty painful. I don't think she would have enjoyed that win.
Tyler:So I think hopefully she realizes, yeah, this is what I meant by hard roots. I don't wanna be able to make mistakes and walk away with easy wins and stuff. Like, this is the challenge she she craves and and I think she'll be excited for the next one. Like, I think I think you see bloodlust, Yanya, for the rest of the season. Like, okay.
Tyler:I remember now what it feels like to lose for silly reasons for just not giving it a 110% when I have the chance. And now, everybody else take a seat while I while I farm gold for the rest of 2026.
Natalie:It's the curse of the fiftieth gold, it seems.
Tyler:I don't understand why 50 golds matters. I don't even know what 50 golds we're counting. Is that like just world cups? Does that include combined golds? What are we It's
Natalie:just I
Tyler:hate this. Get it out of here. Get 50 doesn't mean garg. Get out. Not interested.
Natalie:It's good marketing.
Rory:Just lead and boulder World Cups. So I think it's yeah. If you come World Champs as well, she's already there, but because she's got so many World Champs in Boulder and lead. I feel it's more the fact that this is like the first like, this Olympic cycle is like the first time she's ever cared about things other than comps. And she and, like, she's go she wants to do Bibliography outside in Ceuse .
Rory:The skills you need to go in red point in a really hard route are very different to the skills you need to on-site a comp climb in a lead final. I feel like a fresh Yanya is very, very hard to beat. And, like, the only times where she's looked like she's been beatable, I think, have been when she's either injured or tired. And but it does feel like the focus is slightly off, and so she's the mistake she makes, she can't just work around and she gets caught out by them.
Natalie:Mhmm. Yeah. I think also like the women's feels definitely catching up to her. Like I think that's fair to say that there's just so much more depth now, and she can't afford to make these mistakes. As you said, Tyler, like, she can't if her foot slips and she burns an attempt or she fluffs the last move, like, she might have got away with that in the past.
Natalie:But now it's just the women are doing well. Either routes are too easy, which I think is happening sometimes on Boulder and Leeds. But otherwise, yeah, I think it says a lot about the strength of the women's field. Like, I actually asked her after she won gold in Paris twenty four. I I sort of I'll ask a slightly tricky question.
Natalie:Like, I could tell that Brooke and Natalia, you know, they were hot on her heels. It was definitely a harder earned win than Tokyo twenty '20. So I asked Yania at Paris 2024, like, what do you think of Brooke and Natalia as sort of pushing you? Like, do you think the gap is closing? And she said, every year and in the past, I've shown what's possible and how strong you can get.
Natalie:Of course, girls want to beat me. They're training hard, but I'm also training hard. So I'm just always trying to be two steps ahead of them, and today was enough. So, yeah, she knows that everyone else is training and trying to beat her, catch up with her, but it definitely feels like maybe that pressure is also sort of getting to her a bit. But maybe we also need some harder routes.
Natalie:Because it's definitely, like, when the routes are just a bit too easy, like, she makes a simple mistake, and it's just she can't get away with it anymore.
Tyler:But rock climbing will die if people don't top. So, you know, we have to we have to make it easy apparently. Yeah. I I think I think Janja is like, so this is this her first season of, so she did some comps in 2015. Right?
Tyler:So that that would have been her first season, but then you delete a season because 2020 really didn't exist. So this is her tenth season. Am I doing that math right? Or is this a complete shamble? Is Or this her eleventh season?
Tyler:Anyway, she's basically ten years older than she was when she started out and I I think there's probably got a bunch of it has to be a bunch of reflection at this point of like, okay, who am I now? Who was I before? What are those experiences I remember as a young kid, and how are these people around me living that experience now? And do I see myself in the Mina's and the and the Jain's and the Anna's and the Akiyo's that I, like, looked up to and that I was, like, hungry to compete against? Do I see my work ethic in those people?
Tyler:Do I think they're people that are capable of of beating me after I've, like, blazed an entirely new trail of what it means to be a top female climber in the combined era, which had, like, really never been done before. And I think she's starting I think it probably took a couple years to become convinced like, oh, you know, maybe you don't believe that Natalia on Janja's best day can actually beat her. Maybe you don't believe Brooke on her best day can beat her. But as you see more and more of these competitors coming up and when a couple of them fall off, like, okay, and Natalia and Brooke aren't here, well, there's still Annie and and there's still Aaron and and, you know, Cheyenne is always there nipping at your heels. It just you're starting to play the odds more and more and and all of those women have way better coaching support and way better federation support than the people that she was competing against in 2015, 2016.
Tyler:Like, it's real now. They have full time coaches and they have full time training centers and all of them have learned from Janja's coach, you know, like literally have done workshops with him. They have trained with him and with her And so whatever trade secrets, whatever things about your personality make you special, you've become the manual for everybody else. And, so ten years in, you're looking at a world you created. All of your competitors are now your creation and they're coming specifically for you.
Tyler:I think this is when it's gonna get serious and I think the LA medals are gonna be the hardest medal she's ever had to fight for. It's gonna be a crazy couple of years.
Rory:And I think the next two years, like next year especially, is gonna be totally crazy because so many people are gonna be doing world cups in order to get to the the q series, is a terrible name. Like, why like, everybody's a bit so many bad names. But the q series in which everyone will have
Tyler:Doesn't make you think of James Bond, you know?
Natalie:Yeah. Yeah.
Tyler:It's a little sexy, a little dangerous. It's what the Olympics need. There is a
Rory:show on Netflix called
Natalie:q series. Yeah.
Tyler:And it's what about it's about m I six nerds making pens that record stuff. What's what is it?
Rory:It's a Scottish detective show set in Edinburgh, I think.
Tyler:Oh, okay. I thought it was a James Bond derived kind of thing. Okay. Gotcha.
Natalie:It did have climbing in it. They filmed a Ratho in Edinburgh, the climbing wall randomly. Anyway That
Tyler:that that wall would actually not the wall itself, but that that, you know, that facility would make for a great bond lair, you know, like, villain lair, you know, like and, you know, lives in a lives in an old quarry that he's turned into like a a supervillain, you know, hangout. Yeah. That'd be a great spot for that.
Rory:Yeah. Next year is going to be when people have Olympics sort of tickets start to come up, and you have to qualify for the the Q series in 2028. And you've got all that pressure, and next year is going to be chaos because there are also people gonna have to do a lot of comps. And I think people haven't got away Daniel's gotten away with not doing that many comps. And when she does turn up, she's completely fresh.
Rory:And it's really hard, I think, to beat Janna fresh, like, really, really hard. Like, the only time where she's looked repeatedly beatable was in 2019 when she was cooked from the Boulder World Cup season. And in the lead World Cup season, Chaehyun and Jain both beat her, and she kind of looked tired back in that season. And she hasn't really, like, made that mistake since. And so it's gonna be interesting to see how many won how many World Cup she does in '27.
Rory:Mhmm.
Tyler:I'll I'll also just point out, and maybe Natalie can speak to this or maybe she might disagree with, but my understanding is there's a difference, like, you know, coming in fresh, having avoided, you know, travel from competitions. You've had the training cycle you want. You've had the rest cycle. But if you're coming in, like, fresh and all of your recent climbing experience has been on rock, my understanding is there is a surprisingly hard transition period to get yourself back to excelling on plastic. So maybe she's been you know, I I genuinely do not follow what Yanya has been doing outside.
Tyler:I don't care. But if she is coming off of, you know, cycles of weeks or months projecting stuff outdoors and then she hasn't had the chance to remember what it's like to climb at the hardest level in history on plastic, that's gonna be a tough transition. And so I personally would expect that that is a little bit of what we saw in these last couple of competitions is her having to remember like, oh, yeah. Climbing hard on plastic is way different than climbing hard outside. There is real competition.
Tyler:The moves are different. I have to dial in in a totally different way. So, yeah, I think she I think she probably feels pretty fresh right now, but you just forget, like, what it is you're actually doing. You just forget what the assignment is kinda.
Natalie:Yeah. I think even if there's more of a physical crossover than we might imagine. I think the mental shift of having to perform as she's performed throughout the years when she's purely been focusing on competitions, plus with so many women hot on her heels, I think that that's a new pressure. Like, she probably she might not have the confidence in herself that she used to have. There's a bit of a mental gap maybe more so than a physical one.
Natalie:Yeah. I think that's what part of what we're seeing if she's if her mind's quite literally elsewhere focusing on outdoor stuff. And then at the same time, other people who are purely focusing on competitions are doing really well, then, yeah, that can't be easy. But I do think, overall, it's just it's such a good thing for the sport to have such a strong field for the women, especially. We've just not seen this in recent years, and I think it'll push both Yanja and the field as a whole.
Natalie:So I think it's really exciting. I can't wait for the rest of the season.
Tyler:Yeah. I think it gives people more more reason to tune into the next comps. I think they're like, oh, what will happen? You know? And it's all false hope.
Tyler:She is gonna win everything dominantly. Don't don't worry. But you're you're just you're inside. You're just not quite sure anymore. So yeah.
Rory:Yeah. And and on the men's side, Alberto continued his podium run without a gold medal. It's like seven seven comps with with a World Cup medal without a a gold. I was
Natalie:praying for him. Praying for him.
Tyler:I I I'm start maybe starting to regret becoming such a fan of his however many years ago that was. Yeah. What did you guys think of this route? Because I like, I mean, I I it's well, obviously, Neo wins it from last place and finals. He basically does the masterclass, then we watch everybody else not be able to match him.
Tyler:Did you guys think the route was too hard? Do you think the crux was actually, like, that difficult? What what did you guys take away from from it while watching it?
Natalie:When I watched it live and I mean, I always do this anyway. Like, every time someone comes out and gets on the head roll, I'm like, it's too easy. But then we listen to this time. We saw him get really high and then my partner was like, oh, they've over like, they've undercooked it. Like, it's gonna be eight tops or how many tops.
Natalie:And then then, yeah, everyone just kept dropping off like flies and yeah, I've never been so wrong.
Rory:Feel like the men's has just become so close. Like, so often, like, we saw this in Copa last year. Think six out of eight finalists have won a World Cup. And Alberto was one of the other ones, who hadn't. And the other one was Putra who has made final before, and it's like, okay.
Rory:That's the sort of world we're living in the men's now is you've
Tyler:got a cent you can have
Rory:a final of World Cup winners almost, which means anyone can win, and it's just kinda crazy. And then Neo climbed really well and really smooth. And then I had the problem of I cut problem is when he set the the high point and then everyone else started falling, it's just this it just became a bit boring for me. And it just became a bit underwhelming and, okay. Like, it felt like everyone was kind of falling sort of.
Rory:I don't know. I I kind of lost the interest to me, which is very different from the woman's. The woman's was probably like went to a point of one of the most intense comps ever It was such a tense final, especially with Annie climbing as slowly as she is and channeling Jane Kim and eking out the whole climb as long as possible. But in the men's, yeah, it felt yeah. I I I got I got a bit bored and under
Tyler:Were were you able to find the humor in it of just like just watching like a, you know, a seven car pile up on the highway? It's like, oh, is this gonna person make the same mistake? Is this gonna person make the same mistake? Yeah. I don't know.
Tyler:I I was, so I watched it after hearing you talking about the statistics of of someone coming out and winning, from last place. So I had like, the result for the men's was was spoiled for me, that's okay. But it did give me a reason to, really pay attention to his climb and then the others and and try and break down what was going on. And I still can't get like, Serrato and Douyen both looked like they're they were in relatively good shape where they fell, and it was just a mistake of it was kinda like the Janja mistake, at the finish hold of of the women's route. It was a little bit of you just kind of incorrectly estimated where the good grip was gonna be given this was on a tiny little crimp.
Tyler:So it's a much easier mistake to make than than on a giant juggy, a juggy feature. But it was just a bad grip position and and they popped. But their bodies were in in relatively good shape. Like, it's not like they were chicken winging all over like a few of the other guys were at that stage. But I can't like, Neo was in such good positioning and I try to break it down, but sadly, in the moment where he makes that crux set of movements, the camera was super wide.
Tyler:So I can't actually see where his heel hook is behind his body, but he he made it look like everything was within reach without even trying. Like, he climbed so beautifully through that crux sequence and I looked it up and he's like a couple inches shorter than those other guys. So I'm I like I so badly wish there was another camera angle to look at because he looked so settled and stable and centered to the point where he wasn't really putting effort to reach out to that. What was it? 30 was it 40, I guess?
Tyler:40 was the crimp that they popped off of. It was it was already in his hands by the time he had reached for it, like such like beautiful climbing in that moment. And so it was clearly the setup was what let him take that without losing stability. Like his core approach to to all those dual text volumes underneath him, he just, like, nailed a 100% of what was going on through that sequence. And everybody else was, their foot placement was a little too precarious so that if they missed the crimp, which they did, they lost everything.
Tyler:And so I think it's as much as I do say it is, oh, yeah. They just missed, you know, the gripping placement. Neo had the insurance. If he had missed the grip, his body was in such a great spot. He could have tried again for that hold multiple times, and, and that was so as much as that was like a very crux y climb, it's one where when I look back at everybody climbing, I'm like, oh, yeah.
Tyler:A 100% the right guy won. Like, if you could break that climb down to a six move sequence and Neo absolutely, like, aced the the test for that climb. It was really impressive after looking back at it a few times.
Natalie:Yeah. I wondered if there was a mental thing as well of people knowing that people are falling off, down, then just tensing up and not climbing very well. And especially on dual techs, it's just I'm glad it didn't really exist when I was lead climbing because it must be awful.
Rory:Yeah. Especially it's now they're putting dual tex crimps where the no tex is part of the crimp and so you have to be really careful. Because, like, on the women's semifinal route, like, where Yanya fell, that was going to, like, this no tech sort of crimp, which load quite a few people fell. And if you were kind of just through for it, like, you are coming straight off and you had to get your body in the right position in order to then actually hold it and be able to get behind behind the hole into the boot with some texture or at least some purchase on it. And so it's interesting to see that that kind of coming to the lead climbing, which is makes sense.
Rory:Right? Especially on the headwall having some small crimps which are no techs or mostly no techs, it's like a good way to force people to have to slow down and punish those who are two pumps and are starting to row for moves more than they need to.
Natalie:Yeah. I couldn't believe it was only the fifth time that someone gone from eighth to first. I remember Briançon on some few years ago, but other than that, yeah, that's pretty rare. It's good on the resetters for getting it getting it right most of the time, not having a reverse competition. Yeah.
Rory:Do we wanna talk a little bit about speed? The time has come where going into five seconds is not enough to make a final
Natalie:That's insane.
Rory:Truly crazy time. I need to dig up the wide interview of Alex Honnold from, like, pre 2020 in which they were talking about how going sub five was impossible or really hard. And
Tyler:now and
Rory:now, like, sub five gets you barely into the top 20, which is Mhmm. Just crazy. And Yicheng Zhao has kind of been threatening. If you look look back over his stats from, like, youth world champs, he's he's won all of them for, past three or four years. And breaking the world record at the Asian Beach Games earlier this year, he's clearly incredibly good at what he does.
Tyler:Oh, that was him that that broke the record a couple of months ago or whatever? Yeah. Oh, okay. I didn't actually put that together. Okay.
Tyler:Gotcha.
Rory:And then he broke broke it again in Ruzhang and
Tyler:Mhmm.
Rory:And then he gave a awesome interview in his English was just essentially fluent in English. It was really, really interesting. And it was really, really cool. And it was really nice just to hear and see and have that not have that barrier of a translator having him be able to express himself. And he was quite articulate as well, which was really, really cool to see.
Rory:And it's nice to have that style. I just hope that he doesn't go the way of Peng Wu, which is that he will get trained to the point of a finger injury and then loses that magic.
Tyler:Yeah. Well, hopefully, you know, if if it's a if it's a good team and there's good culture, then that's a learning experience and and everybody kinda uses that as an example to avoid, but yeah. Others have very much like, this was like such a speed final, you know, for both men's and women's, like, you've got some races where it's just ridiculous fall after ridiculous fall. You just see people just, you know, pulling up the wall way too late, and people getting through to, like, semifinals. You're like, okay.
Tyler:You just lucked your way all the way here. And then also, like, exceptional races too, like, awesome head to head races. I I never thought I was gonna be, you know I thought for sure that when Russian athletes came back to World Cups, I wasn't gonna recognize any of the names. I thought they would have all retired. So to see Elizaveta, like, back on a podium after pretty much a five year gap was was crazy.
Tyler:I I thought they were all gonna be done. I thought it was gonna be a new generation of climbers coming through. That was really neat just from a historical perspective to still see some of them. Some of them survived the five years of not being allowed to, you know, follow their particular path and having to struggle and just do the kind of like low tier Russian comps. That was super cool.
Tyler:But, yeah, I don't know. I think the men's was was the ultimate, like, story was just seeing such a a stacked field of incredible climbers having to confront this, like is he still 16? Is that what I understand? Like yeah. He was born after the Beijing Olympics, which is is a is a hard thing to process.
Tyler:Yeah. That's crazy. But, yeah. Super cool. I always think there's a little too much hype around, you know, young speed climbers.
Tyler:And part of that is because it feels like, I don't know if this is crazy to say, does it feel like they're a dime a dozen? Like every season, there's gonna be two or three teenage speed athletes who do a time that, you know, is just unbelievable. And then by the next season, they've just folded into that, You know, they're just into the fold of, okay, we've got there's 20 guys who can go sub five all of a sudden, and it's kind of a crapshoot. Like, I just don't expect, Yicheng Zhao is gonna be, you know, the guy to beat every single race. That would be something that we haven't really seen in speed climbing in an exceptionally long time.
Tyler:So we're saying hello to a new guy who's gonna be in the rat race with the rest of them, but I I I do just kinda, like, take my foot off the gas suggesting that he's gonna be the the guy that everyone has to worry about all year round. Like, they all have to worry about each other.
Natalie:Yeah. I was really happy for Alexandra Kalucka because I know she's had a difficult year or so. She was doing a PhD in Edinburgh. I actually saw her, like, once when training at the Bouldering Gym. Yeah.
Natalie:She's been focusing on her studies. She's really clever doing other stuff, but to see her come back and win in the first comp of the season, hope she has a good year ahead. And, yeah, she seems to be back on track. I I definitely like, she posted last year saying that her head wasn't quite in it because she'd just been focused on studies. But, yeah, good to see an athlete doing both things really well.
Natalie:I know it's difficult to balance.
Rory:It kinda makes a lot of sense sort of post Olympic year to have that year out. A lot of athletes have kind of done that, and it'd be interesting to see how they sort of come back and reintegrate kind of back in the comp season after kind of chilling for a bit. Even Yanya kind of and Brooke both even though they both did a few comps, they both went and did other things and took their minds off having to compete and the the pressures of that. I I do wonder how well that will help them going forward in, like, a year or two's time, compared to those who have just sort of continued through. I do wonder if some of the athletes, like, maybe like, maybe Aaron, maybe last year, maybe pushing for that lead overall and pushing for that will that help in two years time, or will that actually harm and create fatigue or create expectations, which when everyone else is back are quite hard to fulfill.
Rory:Be interesting to see what happens. But in speed, yeah, like, one of the things I've been looking at is how many people win on their debut World Cup, which the answer is not that many. He's the eleventh person ever. The last person to do it was Xingguao, Long actually. But it happens more in speed than it does in any of any of the other disciplines, which I find quite interesting.
Rory:You have three in lead, one in Boulder, and then you have seven in speed. So it's it's I do wonder in speed whether if you are suitably fast enough such that your non your kind of comfortable time, which is maybe a little bit slower than your max, is good enough that to get you into, like, a final sit into semifinals, then you have a higher chance of doing well whilst in Boulder and lead. It's just so much harder.
Tyler:Well, I think it's it's also, you know, like, if you if you build, you know, a homologated wall in your garage, you have replicated 99% of the comp conditions. So if you can pull off a four nine six or whatever in your garage, unless you're a little fragile from the pressure, then, yeah, you congrats. You've made it to a speed finals even though you haven't left your house. Right? And these kids like Yicheng , like, yeah, he's been doing the world circuit and the speed comps are ferocious in in Asia.
Tyler:So I think, yeah, it's his first World Cup. But I I would bet this didn't feel much different. In fact, like, Wujiang is my kind of World Cup. It's in a gymnasium. Like, it is a humble venue.
Tyler:It's probably, like, you know, not particularly, well, I'm sure it's packed, but it's not a huge crowd. I'm guessing some of the international events that he's done in the past, whether it's the youth worlds or the Asian games, felt way higher pressure, felt like much bigger stages than this World Cup did. So I'm guessing this was just another comp day for this kid, and, it wasn't too much of a shakeup.
Natalie:Yeah. It feels different to, like, step up from juniors to seniors in Boulder and Leed when you've got different difficulties of roots and different styles and, like yeah. It's just so replicable that you're just doing the same things over and over again, I guess.
Rory:Anyway, it's really cool to see, yeah, see Alexandra Kalucka become the third woman to go in the six one as well. So Dazzak did it at Asian game at the Asian beach games earlier this year, and, obviously, Alexandra Miroslav set the world record under 6.1. So it's interesting to see them fast and also interesting to see, like, going I think to meet finals, you have to go under six point eight seconds, which was Miroslav's record back in Tokyo 2020. And also Alex add Adam Ondre's fastest speed topping, which he was extremely happy about in 2020. Now the whole of the women's speed finalists are faster than Adam Ondra is on the speedball.
Rory:Mhmm.
Tyler:That's great.
Natalie:That's good stuff.
Rory:The race between Sam and Yicheng was really, really good. Both of them was clearly pushing each other, seeing how fast they could go. And I think it that was the that was the world record round, I think.
Tyler:It was, yeah, the semifinals. Yeah. Where we faced him. Yeah.
Rory:It was the semifinals against Sam. Yeah. So and you can see, I think I think if if you're the sort of athlete where the pressure kind of makes you go faster and really builds you up and you really enjoy that pressure, then I think which it it seems like for him at least in this comp it was, then he's just gonna get faster and faster, and it's gonna be really hard to beat. It'll be interesting to see what happens when he's not in China, how traveling and dealing with everything else and just having more comps and having the the chaos, which is speed. Because the faster people go, I always wonder is the chance of making a mistake feels like it goes up.
Tyler:I just wanted to to point this out just because I don't know if I've mentioned it, but, like, the the number of of so you're talking about the number of, like, new well, like, first time, like, first time winners in speed. I should also just mention, like, specifically for the men, but for the women too, the number of people who are winning speed comps right now, the number of different people is also unprecedented. If you go before COVID or especially just a couple years before COVID and you really notice it, you will get like a new speed winner like once every two seasons at most kind of thing. Right? It was a very small club.
Tyler:The comps were generally had like 50% the attendance of the ones that we see today. And so when you were a top speed climber, you could expect to win, you know, a few medals a year because there was really nobody else. You could start to rack up a medal count. The idea that, you know, a Sam Watson or, Vedric Leonardo, that these guys might end up being on the, like, all time metal counts for speed is looking super, super low, compared to the historical counts because the number of people who are participating and able to win is so big right now. I'm just like looking at my own stuff and seeing how how many people are on this list, and it's really just from the last five seasons is the equivalent of, like, ten years or longer of speed comps pre COVID.
Tyler:So, you know, gone gone maybe the days of, like, Sergei Sinitsyn and Evgeny Vaitzhikovsky and and, Qixin Zhong Like, this is a very different sport now. I used to use 2013 as the the starting date of modern speed climbing because 2013 was the first season where there were no classic speed competitions. There were still some events, believe, that weren't actually technically World Cup or World Record walls because they they weren't tested properly, but it was the right layout. It was the 15 meters and all that.
Tyler:So 2013 was always my my, like, start date. That was my, you know, before Christ and after Christ moment in the in the speed climbing world, but I'm starting to think that, okay, you know, the shift is actually from when we got serious about the Olympics and COVID happened and Asia showed up and Russia disappeared. Like, this is something that's maybe the actual big bang of speed climbing. 2013 may have been seven years too early for the way I think about it.
Rory:Yeah. It does feel like the Indonesian, Chinese, and American kind of explosion. It's kind of really changed speed and which is whenever America gets really psyched on a sport, the sport is gonna do better. And that's one of the biggest problems comp climbing has always had is that America's never really got psyched on comp climbing. And so it's quite interesting to see the American speed, see Emma Hunt win the overall last season.
Rory:She had some slips because she's got some new beta beta in this one, which is why she ended up last in Qualys. And then and Sam Watson and Zach Hammer leading the charge on the men's. And Isis made her final again and made it into top eight as well. Isis Rothwell. As well as, like, the Indonesian Chinese who are completely dominating.
Rory:And it's like having that, and Europe is slowly slowly catching up with them. It feels like and each time they catch up, they're at Indonesia, Asia, and US just pushed slightly further ahead by tenth of a second or so.
Tyler:Yeah. And And he may not be pushing boundaries, but if you make a mistake, Michael Holm will take your semifinal spot. So look out. He's there too.
Rory:That's always been the case in speed. Right? Like, it's always been the case that if you mess up, then you will get punished and they train that. And, yeah, it's one of the joys of speed is that chaos, which is what makes it quite so exciting. Watching your speed finals is so fun.
Natalie:Too stressful for me. Too brutal. I was British speed climbing champion, like, once, but it's ironic because I'm like, I'm such a sloth design. But it's fun to watch.
Rory:My favorite stat about Ben Moon is that Ben Moon has a speed World Cup medal.
Tyler:Yeah. He does. What? He does. Give me five seconds.
Tyler:Give me five seconds. Where Ben Moon third place in Nuremberg 1993. Oh, and second place in, the Black Sea. It was they they called it the Black Sea, but it was in, like a resort town in Bulgaria. I I wanna say Altai, but I'm that I feel like that's not even the right country.
Tyler:But yeah. Yeah. Good for Ben, man. Good for him. That's the that was the real that was the true combined era, you know, when it was when when rather than people winning Boulder and lead cups, you had the guys who would somehow win a Boulder and a Speed World Cup.
Tyler:And that was the, that was the let's call that the origin of, the origin of combined climbing.
Rory:You mean lead and speed. Right? Back then, we didn't have boulder till 2000.
Tyler:No. Not, like, not really because there there would be events where you would have lead and speed happening at the same time. And you're right that bouldering wasn't a World Cup like discipline until '98. But you look at before the current combined era where now it's kinda like you're it's impressive, but nobody's, like, really, like, jumping over the moon if you win a lead in a Boulder World Cup. Like, there's, like, a handful of people that have done it now.
Tyler:But to look back at the people who had won multiple events before, Thomas Alexi, who is now just another guy on the route setting circuit, he was one of the first people to win a gold in two different disciplines and it was boulder and speed, know. Mhmm. It it was just those weird moments where if you had the power to be a good boulderer, you could show up to a classic speed wall where you'd never seen again, you'd never seen the climb before and I think forget that about nineties speed and 2,000 speed is it's a brand new route probably and nobody's dialed in the beta. So it is kind of like a boulder problem. You're just putting as much power as you can into the route.
Tyler:So yeah. Anyway, that's my that's my revisionist history is that the original the original combined was a mix of boulder and speed. But Anyway, go Ben Moon. Jacky Godoffe as well actually. Second place at the speed world championships.
Rory:Yeah. Because what's his name? Hans Florian beat Jacky
Tyler:First ever world champion of speed. Yeah. Yeah. Which made sense that, you know, I think at the time, I think that really felt like, okay, speed climbing from outdoors and speed climbing indoors is, you know, they share a lineage, which obviously at this point they don't. But back then, felt like these are you know, we've, we've connected the indoor and outdoor world properly, but maybe not so much anymore.
Rory:In some ways, they're similar. Right? Because the the speed records outdoors are still on the same routes. Yeah.
Tyler:Yeah.
Rory:Like Yeah. How fast can you climb freerider, on El Cap or how fast can you do half dome? It's still the set or how fast you do a triple crown.
Tyler:Yeah. Exactly. You'd you'd have to ask somebody else. I don't know how much, you know, how how many holds fall off on routes like that. Like, I imagine they're traveled enough that that's pretty rare at this point.
Tyler:But but, you're right. It's it's as close as you're gonna get to a standardized speed while outside. Fair enough.
Rory:Yeah. It's one of the challenges of speed because it's essentially as close to red pointing as you get in a comp situation.
Tyler:Mhmm.
Rory:And yet that's the thing people complain the most about. At times complain the most about is the fact that it's essentially a hyped up red point comp. Where everyone has dialed it in and it's just how quick can you do it.
Tyler:Mhmm.
Rory:But anyway, so yeah. So does everyone say anything else about Ruzhang? Thanks. That's a
Tyler:good question. Yeah. Let me just double check my notes really quick see if there's any.
Natalie:I don't think I had
Tyler:No. My notes over and over are just men's four zone men's four zone men's four zone. So I've covered covered everything I wanted to say.
Natalie:Yeah. Wujaing , Ella Fischer, a bit of a US breakout star. She came ninth. It's not a first World Cups, but she'd gone from, like, thirtieth, fortieth odd last year, Yeah. To come in, like, damn near making finals, which is pretty impressive.
Natalie:Thirty second, thirty seventh, fortieth, thirty first, thirty fifth, forty third, forty first, thirty second, and then, yeah, ninth in China. So
Rory:It took Annie Sanders, like, a a season or two to get into regular finals. So it does feel takes you a little bit of time before you are getting into finals nowadays. Because it used to be that if you were going to win a World Cup or do well, you essentially essentially had to do it in your first season. Otherwise, you probably didn't have a chance, and it does feel now that people are starting to warm up and progress. I don't know if some of that is just a change, the age, how old you have to be in order to compete at them.
Rory:At World Cups, you have to, I think, you have to become 17 now in the year that you are doing your first World Cup, which is why Yi Chen can now compete. But that used to be that you had to turn 16. It's like and yeah. So people used to be able to compete for much younger. And so maybe that's just meaning that it's taking a little bit longer.
Rory:I don't know. Mhmm.
Natalie:Yeah. She's only 19.
Tyler:So Yeah. And it might not be a pattern either. It might just be, know, you know, some people some people are just on their way or you might be right. You have to win a World Cup in your first season. So Ella, thanks for trying.
Tyler:Your career is already over. As you already you already didn't clear the bar apparently according to Rory's stats. Yeah.
Rory:It used to I need to actually look that up properly, but it was very much a feeling, like, back pre COVID that if you're going to do well in World Cups, essentially have to do well quite quickly.
Tyler:Are there any athletes you're thinking of specifically? Because I I think there have been times where I would agree with you. Like, when the when, you know, in hindsight, the greatest athletes we've ever seen, yes, when they showed up, it was pretty much instant that you're in finals.
Rory:So I guess so Natalia did Vail, I think, like a year or two before. Yeah. And then, like, her first full season was 21 and Yeah. Yeah, medals were in world cups winning overall. You think of, like, I think, Yanya, obviously, but then she's a she was winning medals.
Rory:She didn't win world cups, but she won medals in, like Yeah. 2015, 2016. Imps and cringe. You think about Miho, I think, as well. Serato most recently.
Rory:I feel it's it was always kind of a feeling of people would do if you're gonna do well, you actually do well well quite quickly. Yeah. Like, I felt this last year with Rosa actually in lead. It kinda felt that she was if she was gonna win a medal or instead of then she was gonna have to kinda do it in that year, and she did at world champs, is a great time to to win a medal. But Rosa Reka and Slovenian team, it always felt she was making finals, getting to fourth, and it wasn't quite she wasn't quite making the next next sort of move to get into medals.
Rory:And was like her, like, second first or second season sec her second season, I think.
Tyler:I think you're the way you feel about it is that is how I think about it too for women specifically. I I do find that I will after I've seen a woman compete in a semifinals a few times, if they haven't medaled and I you know, this is a bias I hold against someone like Oceana Mackenzie where I've seen her compete for like a pile of years now. And I just say, you know, like a win's not in the cards for you. That's where my bias is mentally because I've just seen all those other female climbers do that. For men, it does feel differently.
Tyler:Generally, they win later. If I remember right, this would have been like before COVID that I was looking at these stats. But for men, generally, early wins come in your early twenties, whereas for women, it was coming in your teen years. And so I don't feel the bias as much when I look at men, you know. I'm willing to accept that, you know, a guy can be can be on the circuit for years before getting a win.
Tyler:But for women, I'm almost like, you know what? Yeah. The door has closed for you if you haven't gotten a medal or won something in your first season or two. I wonder if that will change. I really don't know.
Tyler:But but that is certainly where my my brain is at when I'm like subconsciously judging people for better or for worse.
Rory:Yeah. Like for Rosa, she sort of start had a full proper season in 02/2024 and she made a she in Briançon , ah, Briançon , the comp . She got a fourth place in Briançon in 2024, that hotly contested comp. Just before the Olympics. But yeah, it's yeah.
Rory:And then it yeah. She she kinda still was doing some of the EU circuit, European circuit. And it was like last year felt like she was the first doing doing well, and it kinda felt like that was the time for her to move to make that was she gonna become a medalist, and was she going to have that chance? And she yeah. She kind of did she won that world championship medal.
Natalie:Then you got outliers like Erin, who took a year or two to kinda build up like, had a youth career as well, but, like, didn't really make finals or get any medals. But then she's sort of a slow burn, like, peaked just at the right time for Paris and now, like, in last year, obviously. But
Tyler:And I'll be honest. It it might not be an outlier anymore. Like, I'm I'm going off of, you know, things I looked at years ago, and it was with hindsight. So I was kinda looking at, like, the the biggest names in history, not just the biggest names at the time. So so I do have this bias.
Tyler:It it is probably not justified, but I'll I'll take a look at it again and see see if it still holds up these days. It's hard though. You do need a certain amount of hindsight. Right? I can't judge Rosa Recar's career right now and say whether or not she missed the window.
Tyler:I don't know if she's gonna win or not. She could. But, yeah, that's what I seem to remember.
Rory:Yeah. It's like Toby fits into the category of, like, Toby won a medal in his first proper season in 2022 in Edinburgh, and that kind of heralded in kind of what came afterwards with him being a a big contender on the lead World Cup season. And, yeah, I feel like it could be that it is changing, especially as people are start starting to being stronger is more important than being light. I feel like that's starting to become a thing. And I think if you're a teenager, it's easier to be light than it is to be strong just because of no.
Rory:I don't know how you feel about an athlete, but it feels like the the site the kind of what's required in the female field is that you need to be a lot stronger than you used to be, and especially in Boulder. Like, it used to be in lead. It was something where being light was prioritized more and rewarded more than being strong. And it's really nice to see actually in the last few years that changing.
Natalie:Yeah. The route settings definitely helped with that because you can see the crossover between bouldering and lead is is so much closer together. Like, the the lead routes are much more powerful. They've got sort of bouldery cruxes, less fewer sort of, like, shakeouts and heel hooks and stuff. They're just not as endurance based like crimp fest style climbs that we used to have, and it's definitely for the better.
Natalie:You need weight, you need power to build momentum, and you can't get away with not being healthy anymore, fortunately.
Rory:Well, was a tangent which we went down. But, yeah, I I think things are changing, and I think it is now that you can kind of slowly build in more than you used to be. I think in the past, was very much if you had you ever had the talent or you didn't, which is a good thing I think, because I think it rewards people who who work hard more than those yeah. Not that those people some of those people who had talent didn't work hard, but I think it shows the maturity of the sport.
Natalie:Guess there's been some questions and debate around the reinstatement of Russian Belarusian athletes under the neutral, like, the neutral athlete criteria. I actually asked Serik Kazbekov , the head of the Ukrainian Sport Climbing Federation, for a comment just for for their perspective on it. He said, from our side at the Ukrainian Mountaineering and Climbing Federation, the current IFSC or world climbing neutrality criteria feel like they're full of dangerous loopholes, opposition hasn't changed and we've already shared plenty of evidence with the IFSC about this. You simply can't look past active military contracts, ties to state backed military clubs or government funding just because an athlete claims they are not in active service. In these regimes, sports and the military go hand in hand.
Natalie:Allowing these athletes to compete completely defeats the purpose of being neutral in inverted commas. It's really concerning to see international federations losing their independence. They seem to be blindly following IOC guidelines instead of standing up for ethics and the safety of clean athletes. Because of this, and especially after the recent troubling moves regarding Belarusian athletes competing under their national flags again, we're putting together a unified official appeal. This will be a joint, high level statement from the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine, our National Olympic Committee and us at the UMCF.
Natalie:We're in constant touch with our European partners, coordinating our next steps. We will be using every platform available, including the upcoming Extraordinary General Assembly, to push the shared stance and demand a much stricter, more transparent vetting process. We truly believe that as long as hidden military contracts and ties are ignored, the integrity of international climbing competitions is compromised. So this is it's not just about the Russian full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. It's also about other conflicts that are happening across the world as the international rule of law seems to be degrading, and there's just a lot of debate about, you know, Israel, The USA.
Natalie:There's been a few appeals put in by different federations for different countries, USA, Russia, Israel. There's just a lot of people who are debating whether athletes from these countries should be competing at all, even under the the neutral athlete status.
Rory:Because they they changed it in October last year to just exclude people who aren't actively part of the military on on active service. And they also have to have not expressed any support or promotion of the armed conflict as well, at least in the new draft league rules.
Tyler:From my understanding, are you're saying people can can technically be in the military, but you cannot be like in act like in active service. I don't I don't even know it because I know sometimes when you're in active service, you you do come home for rest or whatever. So, you can you can have a uniform in your closet. You know, you can be in a position where you may be called upon and whatnot, but so long as you're not actively out there, you know, in a role, you're now allowed to compete.
Rory:Yeah. I think it's it's trying to square the circle because lots of climbers are supported by the military and employed by the This is true like France, like like, Oriane is supported by the military. Yep. Janja used to be supported by the Slovenian military. Austria, it's true as well.
Rory:Like, Jakob and Jessy, they're all supported by police slash military.
Tyler:That was one of the best like, one of my favorite moments each year in competitive climbing was when you would see all of the climbers go to the world military games and they would all show up in their fatigues or their military uniform. And it was just kind of like a funny, you know, juxtaposition to what they're normally wearing and at the time, it didn't carry a ton of geopolitical weight. Of course, that's completely changed, but but, yeah, there's a ton of these athletes are are military people. It makes me sound ridiculous, but, yeah, a ton of them are involved.
Rory:It makes sense from a mountaineering point of view that the military would support mountaineers and people who would be fighting in mountains and support or support in mountains. And you've seen in Ukraine, Natalie, you've you've written about this about some of the top climbers in Ukraine going and being part of this in special military groups in fighting in the mountains.
Natalie:Yeah. There's, unfortunately, a lot of climbers who've been killed fighting in Ukraine, fighting the Russian army, and, yeah, it's it does make it difficult. Yeah. I think maybe we we all have different opinions on it, but I just I'd like no matter what you think politically, like, I just probably one of the most important perspectives is probably, you know, how does a Ukrainian athlete feel competing alongside a neutral Russian or Belarusian athlete. You know, may maybe that's the perspective we should consider, first of all.
Natalie:And then, you know, the wider geopolitical, like, you know, what what does this athlete represent by, you know, representing Russia? Like, you know, what message is that sending out no matter what they think personally. Unfortunately, they are part of a system, and they are being used as pawns technically by governments. I like to think people aren't like governments, but it's all about symbolism and state ties. Yeah, I think the situation for world climbing and other sports federations is only going to get more complicated as, you know, geopolitical situation changes.
Natalie:And this extraordinary general assembly, as Serik described it, this is an event that's gonna be held in July. I'm not sure if it's in person or online because it was meant to be at the AGM in Saudi Arabia, but that got canceled due to politic geopolitics in The Middle East. So, yeah, that's gonna be an interesting discussion. I'd I'd really like to I I doubt that it'll be made public, but, yeah, it sounds like something worthwhile, whether it'll come to any conclusions. As I said, a lot of the federations have put in various appeals against different nations, different federations.
Natalie:We just have to see what happens and hopefully have some transparent processes and outcomes from that discussion.
Rory:So after the Saudi Arabia meeting was canceled due to the war in Iran, they being in person, they decided to postpone it originally to, I think, later in the end of, like, December or sometime. And then these countries asked to have an EGM, which is happening in July, to kind of discuss the politics of it. And you have these two subtle contrasting views. I feel like with sport, you have the sport as a privilege, which countries get to take part in. And, therefore, if you aren't willing to play the role of the international game, then you don't get to take have take that privilege and take part in that.
Rory:And then you have very much the FIFA is going to have this with the World Cup with Iran competing in The USA in the World Cup, which is like that. Yeah. Two countries potentially still at war competing in football in your own country is very weird situation. And that the IOC and FIFA and a lot of these bodies view sport as a vehicle to get people to to cooperate and to come together and to kind of to stop what's happening to it for it not to be so geopolitically diff to kind of, like, mend and to kind of bring people together. And that's very much the message which they talk about, and that's why they do.
Rory:And there's always that challenge of how do you view sport and competition on international.
Natalie:It's such an ideal that we'd really we should really uphold of, like, sport bringing people together and it being all about peace and togetherness. But, unfortunately, when you've got bad state actors manipulating it and using it for their own militarized ends. It's it's never gonna be a good thing. So, yeah, I think it's it's a really important discussion to have. I'm glad that I world climbing, you know, that are taking it on.
Natalie:It's important.
Rory:It is. We'll see what comes out of it. World Climbing, I foresee, were really good with at the start of the Ukraine Russia or being one of the few federations to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes very quickly. And and it's kind of the IOC has left it up to federations. The Paralympic, Federation Paralympics Committee has already said that all Russian and Belarusian athletes can compete as neutral athletes.
Rory:Like, that that happened in the Paralympic Winter Games earlier this year. Whilst it's been up left up to federations so far, I'm sure there is pressure if you're part of the Olympic Olympic family to follow in the whatever the IOC say.
Natalie:I think in some ways, the decision has kind of been accelerated by all the other conflicts. And is it an easier out for them just to let Russia and Belarus back in because they don't have to handle other countries. It's yeah. There's there's a lot going on, but, yeah, all worth talking about. Okay.
Rory:Do we wanna talk about overalls and who we think is gonna do one of the overalls?
Tyler:I will participate if you want to. I've I've never found much success in predicting how overalls go mostly because people will show up to a lot of stuff. So it's always yeah. It's been a tough one for me, but but yeah. I'll I'll give it a
Natalie:What do we win? What do we win if we get it? €9,000.
Tyler:Yeah. There's euro holds will do a separate prize just for us.
Rory:It's nice to see the see the series winner actually get a numb amount of money which is publicized, which is more than just winning a World Cup, which is is actually nice to see.
Tyler:It just feels like it's at the wrong time, unfortunately. It's like, you know what? It would have been great if this existed, you know, pre pre '19, reward the people who are winning what was in a lot of times the actual most important prize. But now it's just like everything is so deeply in the shadow of the Olympics that it's like, okay. Great.
Tyler:This is a little money that's gonna go to towards climbers. I got nothing wrong with that. But the last bunch of years, the people that are, like, podiuming on the overall, I think you could nitpick a lot and say, these aren't the three best climbers of the year necessarily. It's it's too much down to who's actually showing up to events and who's not, and it kinda ruins the gravitas because it just doesn't line up with history. You just look at the names and you're like, that doesn't correlate with who the best climbers are, which is why I always liked it in the past.
Tyler:It felt like it was some kind of representation of of who was really the best climber of the time rather than the world championships, which had a little more, you know, variance in the results. But yeah. So I think it's a little too late for it to you know, it's not gonna jump start the overall into being the most valuable prize in climbing or anything, but it's nice that there's a bit more money in it.
Natalie:I'm gonna go with Annie Sanders She just seems to be on good form, and I think she'll do quite a lot of them. Men. Oh god. I don't know.
Tyler:Alberto. I don't know. That's not bad. That's Yeah. He does do a lot of the comp.
Natalie:Yeah. And then Boulder. I just don't know how many JanJa's gonna how many Janja's gonna be.
Tyler:Janja's like like, I would get Janja's not gonna be on the podium for any of the overalls, so she's which is it just explains why it doesn't work, but, yeah, she won't be there.
Rory:She's just not doing enough comps. I think she's doing like, only other so she is she is down for Prague. She's registered, but but she probably won't turn up. But then she's only doing Innsbruck and Koper and Santiago. So in Boulder, she's, like, doing one may one, maybe two if she chooses to do Boulder in Innsbruck.
Rory:But lead if it was best five out of six, then I think she'd have a chance of getting on the podium for lead. But Of course. But because it's now all six, it's a lot harder Yeah. If you skip.
Tyler:I just because because Natalie did her lead takes, I'm just gonna put my lead ones in while I remember. You stole Alberto from me, so I'm gonna settle for Serrato and Raku. I'm gonna, you know, nobody's first choice, but I'm gonna sell. I'm gonna hope he does some comps. And then I'm gonna say Erin McNeese repeats, and I'm I'm gonna hope that this was just a slightly off week weekend for her and she's, she's back on top after this.
Tyler:Those are my lead picks.
Rory:Erin does have the curse finishing fourth a lot.
Tyler:Hey. But if you finish at least fourth every time, you're doing okay. That's pretty good.
Rory:Talking of mister consistent, I'll go with Satone Yoshida, who will do improve on his third place overall last year and who also seems to be mister fourth place. I'm so well in semis in Wuzhang. So well. He was and then in finals, he looked like the pressure just got to him, or he just had one of those good semis, not so good finals kind of rounds for whatever reason. But, like, I it would be really cool.
Rory:I I I think Satone has a good chance of doing well in the overall for men. Since I can't pick Alberto, which would have been the one I would have fixed because he's just missed the consistent. And then for women, I I go with the slightly boring option, which is Chaehyun Well, I think Chaehyun will do the will do also, I think Chaehyun will do all the lead ones.
Tyler:Yeah. I feel I feel like she'll be across the whole season.
Rory:Yeah. She she's not down to compete in Burn for Boulder, so I'm wondering if Shayan is going to start specializing again in lead.
Tyler:I think it'd be great. I think it'd be great. I think I talk talk about a career that I can't wait to, like, do a retrospective on of, like, the just the biggest just she just created such a splash, you know, on arrival. Her first, like, three months of world climb, we were just unbelievable. And since then, it's just been a disappointment almost the whole time.
Tyler:If if she sees it from that lens and but I'm sure there is that pressure. Anyway, can I can I go first for bouldering so I get picks before Natalie does? Okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna take the the Annie pick for bouldering. I I I think that would be a really fun story.
Tyler:And I'm also gonna, probably make a mistake and pick as my men's choice, but I just want that to be I want him to be at every comp. He's still my favorite to watch. So I'm gonna hope he's at every comp. I'm gonna hope he make finals every time, and I hope that gets him enough points to take number one.
Natalie:You go, Rory, and then I'll go last.
Rory:There's only three men you can pick from, so it's really easy. So you wouldn't put Serato in athletes. I'll pick Dohyun So we're, like, these are the three. It's, like, one of
Natalie:the Yeah.
Rory:Like, yeah. I love like, Dohyun is so good at the physical boulders, and that's really his strength. It'll be really interesting to see how and then Mejji is, like, really is the best at the coordinate hard coordination. And Serato is just this all rounder who is just super, super good at everything, which is why it's so hard to beat him. He he does as you said last year, Tyler, he does need to to speed up if he wants to catch Kilian's record of 21 golds.
Rory:He's only a third of the way there.
Tyler:I was gonna say that that that's actually a real thing about Jania too is she is now behind Anna Storr's pace for bouldering, you know. So again, cracks in that goat argument just abound.
Rory:Yeah. She's still third behind Akiyo and Anna in the Boulder World Cups. I I kind of always felt that she's she's she's Slovenian and quite clearly, like, if she has to pick between Lead and Boulder, picks Lead every time.
Tyler:Mhmm.
Rory:Very much the Slovenian woman's perspective.
Natalie:Women, I'll go Oriane. I just think she's very consistent, and she'll we can pretty much she's a solid bet for, like, top four, top five. So hope she does that a few times, and then we'll see. But, yeah, it's definitely a hard year for the women's.
Tyler:Are you guys like, I might just be reading too much into this, but I'm really liking this this Oriane arc over the last bunch of years. It's like, I remember the first impression was she just looks like she's having so much fun on the circuit as a young like, still a kid, like, genuinely a kid when she showed up on the circuit and, just having a great time, like, overperforming by all metrics. Right? And I feel like she's gotten, like, darker and more serious over time, and it feels like the development of, like, a really good villain arc all of a sudden. I'm really, really enjoying the potential for this in the future.
Tyler:It's a it's a cool, yeah, it's a cool, a cool setup for maybe a future storyline.
Rory:I feel like, Orianne, she wears her heart on her sleeve Mhmm. And you can really tell.
Tyler:And her heart is darkening.
Rory:And you can tell when she's pissed off and annoyed and she's kind of like, alright, like, both at herself and the situation and the result and she's just cannot be happy and you can really see that. And I like like I like it when climbers are people and show that they really care and you see how much it hurts and they don't like seeing Yang Ye come down the lead route and she's you can see her swearing and she is seriously unhappy. It's great to see it when Ori Anne doesn't even get to zone on the fourth boulder and you can see how visibly unhappy she is.
Natalie:Yeah, definitely. I think there's definitely a bit of a expectation that female athletes sense their emotions more. Like I think they get more flack if they look grumpy or don't smile all the time. So I do like it when people like Orianna just let it all out. Just just swear, like, within within reason, like, not, you know, kicking a short bag
Tyler:or whatever.
Natalie:I think it's Don't
Tyler:pull moustache on us, you know. Like, don't don't unleash the beast, but no. I'm just kidding.
Natalie:Yeah. It's what Charlie used to always say. You know? It's like everyone pretends we're all best friend. There is obviously, that's a good element of the sport.
Natalie:Like, is supportive of one another, and we don't want that want that to change. We're just having a bit more emotion and, like, you know, true emotion, raw emotion that's not censored would be good.
Rory:I do feel after they take Annie and Oriane, it's, like, there's, like, no one obvious to pick out of the the women's field, I feel like, in terms of like, who like, Oriane, like
Tyler:You don't think Natalia Grossman's gonna drop an Instagram post being like, hey, guys. The I'm feeling good and I'm on my way.
Rory:She's just not gonna do enough comps to, like, have a chance, especially now we live in six comps in the season and you don't get to drop one. Yeah. It's like she's just still recovering and she's just not going to. I don't think yeah. I don't think Erin's gonna do that many boulder ones.
Rory:It's just
Tyler:And now now you tell me. No. I'm just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding.
Rory:No. I I I'm just gonna go with well, she might do more lead ones, Tyler. I don't know. It's yeah. I know she I think she said around around British, league championships that she was looking to take things a bit easier this year, but after pushing quite hard last year because she cared about winning World Cups and winning the lead overall quite a lot last year.
Rory:Mhmm. But this year, I I I'm I'm going to mildly annoy you, Tyler, and go with Osh.
Tyler:Okay. It's your money. It's your money.
Rory:My money. We'll go with Oceania Mackenzie. She's gonna upgrade, her her bronze from, last year to
Tyler:Oh, that is true though. Yeah. No. It's being consistent showing up. You're right.
Tyler:Like, yeah.
Rory:Yeah. She'll be consistently showing up, think. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be interesting to see if she can, yeah, if she can go and get a bronze and get a silver or a gold this season.
Rory:I think Osh will turn up to a lot of comps. I do feel like sometimes it's a much she has to mental side and she has to kind of, like this is true of all the athletes. So much of climbing is a mental sport in terms of who performs well. And once you get that confidence, you can see people really build on it, and it really helped them grow.
Natalie:Yeah. She didn't miss many finals last year, so super consistent. It's probably that thing of like once she just having to believe that she's capable of getting silver or gold and it'll happen and then she'll just do it more regularly.
Tyler:And what about for speed? I guess, Rory, unfortunately, you have to go first for the notoriously predictable speed
Rory:over Oh, I'm gonna be optimistic. I'm gonna say Sam Watson's finally gonna win it. He cares about it And I think I think last year, had he not have had that false start, I think he would have won it. I think Sam really wants to win the overall, so I'm gonna have Sam for speed.
Tyler:Okay. Any picks for the women's side?
Rory:Because Oola's only doing Krakow, so it isn't Yes. She also has never won the overall as well.
Tyler:Oh, really?
Rory:Yeah. Wow. She's quite similar to Yanya in that she cares about winning championships. She doesn't really care of
Tyler:No. I guess I just thought in the in like 2023, she must have won it. But No. You're right.
Rory:She nearly won it. She she nearly won it, I think, in '24. She went to China at the very end of the season to try and win it.
Tyler:Oh, okay.
Rory:And then she didn't. She, I think, something yeah. She kind of messed up. And I'm gonna go with Desak for for the women. It'd be awesome to see Desak series.
Rory:She's one of the fastest. She has that potential to be the fastest.
Natalie:I'll go with shall I just say, Kalucka twins, then I get double pick .
Tyler:No, you got because I'm picking one of them. You gotta you gotta pick the other.
Natalie:Okay, I'll go with Natalie. I'll go with my namesake. Natalie. Alright.
Tyler:You pick the more consistent one, yeah. I think for this is probably a bad guess, but for for the sake of seeing and this is gonna make it sound like I'm a huge like Russia stan, like just parading around with Putin posters everywhere or something like that. But I'm gonna I'm gonna take a guess and I don't think she'll win, but it would be really cool is if, Elisaveta was on the podium for, for the, for the overall at the end of the season. Elisaveta Ivanova. It would just be a first time in a bunch of years that we've seen a Russian athlete in that podium after they dominated for decades.
Tyler:So that would be cool, and I feel like it's as good a guess as any. For the men, I'm gonna I don't know. I still I still think of Veddriq Leonardo as as the guy to consistently just always put up good scores. So I'm gonna I'm gonna pick Vedric again, come back after a couple years, be on be on top. So Rory, you're gonna have to write all this down and you know, seven months from now or whatever, you gotta double check.
Rory:It's the joy of editing, is that we have to write it all down plus I edit.
Natalie:I'll say Yucheng's. Did you pick Yicheng? No.
Rory:I picked Sam.
Natalie:Okay. I'll pick Yicheng.
Tyler:Riding the hype. Who knows? Who knows?
Rory:Yeah. It's gonna be interesting to see how many people do turn up this year and how or how much this becomes the rock year part two after last year where I felt like everyone just went outside and didn't really care as much about comps. But Mhmm. Next year is will be comp chaos because of qualification for the Olympic qualifier series. Two series, whatever it's called.
Tyler:Thanks
Rory:you both for joining for this. The first episode of hopefully many. We'll chat about comp climbing and all the things. Hopefully, listeners enjoy this and enjoy hearing us chat about comps. So, Tyler, so you the reason that you couldn't watch a lot of the comps live, not just because they're in China, but because you were running your own competition series.
Rory:Is this is it Triple Crown?
Tyler:So I work for Ontario. Right? Yeah. I work for a a small chain of gyms in Ontario in the Toronto area. So, we have three gyms right now, so we just do a a series, each year.
Tyler:It's just a a pretty typical boulder comp. So it's your, you know, red point scramble qualifiers, and then, we do, like, a a World Cup style finals using, like, twenty twenty four rules. So we're still using, like, tops and attempts to top and zone rather than, point based scoring and stuff like that. But, yeah, it's a it's it's I don't know. Like, honestly, the the first thing that got me excited about comp climbing was the behind the scenes stuff.
Tyler:Like, that's, you know, a couple months into being a climber after discovering it in the gym, I was volunteering for comps just out of peer pressure and really enjoyed it. You know, getting to be the guy sitting, you know, surrounded by just tarps hung up on the wall in ISO with all these climbers who are about my age who were just like incredibly strong and just watching what they did in isolation and then, you know, learning how to judge, learning how to belay and so on and that really just took me down the path of adoring running climbing competitions. So so these comps are like nothing particularly like special or fresh. We're just trying to rebuild a bit of climbing culture in in Toronto after COVID really knocked out, a lot of the the infrastructure and the comps that had been around for a long time. A lot of them just died in those, kinda like a there was basically four years of of no real competitions in the Greater Toronto area.
Tyler:So we're just trying to bring it back, and it's a blast. I think the the fun thing for me right now has been, trying to get other people involved in the roles because I've always ended up doing a lot of the setup and the logistics stuff. And then I have to wrap up the weekend by emceeing the finals, which I really enjoy. But it just means it's a lot. And this was the first time I got somebody else to emcee for the cup.
Tyler:I had somebody else kind of managing the the the day to day, like, preorganization of everything, and it was really fun. I actually got to enjoy being at the event. I had a really good time just, hanging out with people climbing and watching them doing their attempts. And then in finals, I got to watch. It was a it was a blast, man.
Tyler:It was really cool.
Rory:What was your so is this what, so you have a separate comp at each gym, or it's like a series, or is it just like one big comp?
Tyler:Yeah. There's no there's no series component really. That might be something we do in the future, but at the moment, it's really just three stops. So so we just do three competitions. They all have their own individual prize pool, but nothing accumulates from comp to comp.
Tyler:Maybe that'll happen in the future. I the guy that owns these gyms was the was the man who started what we call Tour de Bloc in Canada, which was effectively, kind of the the Canadian version of the ABS in The States and it's really the comp series that taught everybody in Canada how to run competition or how to be a boulder competitor. He was just organizing comps across the country and it was the series that fed our national team for quite a few years as well. Just, you know, being run off the back of one guy who was just really dedicated to to that kind of thing. The same guy that brought World Cups to Toronto from 2013 to 2015.
Tyler:So, it's fun. We have a a good team of people at this gym who happen to be like, you know, competitive bouldering, especially is, like, in the blood of a few of us. So we're a bit of, a powerhouse. And unfortunately, as we all age, there's that brutal reality of, you know, you you you look at the, you're looking at your balance sheet the whole time and it really conflicts with your your competition optimism. You always want to, you know, increase the prize pool, increase the budget, but as you get older, you you kinda start paying attention to, like, what actually makes money, what costs money.
Tyler:So we're we're playing it relatively conservative, relatively grounded.
Rory:I always feel like what one of the challenges climbing has, for some reason climbing comps never seem to actually make anyone any money, which is such a big shame because in so many other ports, it feels like comps do make money, and it can work as an events business, and you can actually function. But it feels like so often for some reason, we don't wanna charge for climbing comps. I don't know why it's because we just don't feel like anyone will ever turn up unless it's free, which is says which is an indictment of the what we think about competitions, really. Is it looking to be more sustainable, or is it looking just to be like a feeder for or just be something which the gym cares about?
Tyler:I I think, like, sustainable is is probably a little too generous for, like, what's possible with the, like, type of resources that we're willing to spend. Like, if if you're running this from the perspective of being a climbing gym, you obviously have your, like, your base operations of needing to be open for members and and for customers. So you take a hit on that, not just being closed for the competition day, but usually either a full or partial closure for a couple days leading up to it for the setup. And the comps, like, specifically with the route setting is just really labor intensive, especially if you are doing, scramble competition that's gonna involve a lot of boulders going up. Route setters cost more than they did in the past.
Tyler:That's true for pretty much everything about climbing, but, you know, you're paying routesetters more. They have better working conditions than they did in the past. They're not expected to, you know that when I was route setting, it was implied that for two days you were sleeping over at the gym and it was a thrill. I loved every second of it but I was also a lot younger and I didn't know any better and it was just a lot of fun. But now rightfully, the Root Setters expect to go home to their own bed in between nights and get some proper rest and have a team that's sized correctly so that they can forerun things, you know, effectively and create a better experience.
Tyler:But it just does mean it's it's an expensive event to run. That's just true. So sustainable is a little too far. But if you say, you know, what are the things we care about? What makes us feel proud?
Tyler:What, what kinda like how do we live our values to the to the community around us? And if one of them is climbing should be, you know, a positive athletic experience and competition should be something that is a positive growth experience for people, deciding to spend a little bit of money for for an event like this once a year, think is a completely worthwhile, event to do. So I think it was, I I always think it's worth it. I have a lot of fun and it's just, showing people a different perspective of climbing. Because I think that's something people like us might forget is, is what it means to to be in your first month as a climber.
Tyler:And you forget how big this sport is, how many different avenues you can take to fall in love with climbing. It's not just outdoor and indoor, but there's competitive and so many different approaches to to to how you make this a part of your life. So I think using it as a showcase to, to give people a new way to fall in love with
Tyler:it is really important.
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