The Inside Climbing Podcast

Rory: 00:00

Welcome to the Inside Climbing Podcast. My name is Roy, and I am joined this week by Natalie Berry and Tyler Norton to debrief the first pro climbing league event. Natalie is a journalist, a former GB athlete, and former editor of UK Climbing. Tyler ran the Plastic Weekly Podcast, one of the very few competition climbing focused podcast for many years alongside John Bergman. We talk a lot about the route setting and the format and the trade off which come with having such a format and the pressure it puts on the route setters.

Rory: 00:26

We compare the event to IFSC world climbing competitions. And we also talk about the differences between the in person experience, which I had compared to the experience Natalie and Tyler had watching the live stream. Let's jump right in. So we're here to just chat about PCL, which happened on Saturday. So I haven't actually watched live stream yet.

Rory: 00:47

I'm going to watch it at some point and I am going to do some stats on it because I do want to see how little climbing there was in a four hour event because it didn't fit it compared to world cups in which the world cups kind of cram as much climbing as possible at all times. Even if the climbers doing nothing is still a climber on the mat. They try and maximize that plus this clearly did other things. So yeah, I'm really curious to hear about from you guys, what you thought of the show and of the live stream. And you guys, you can ask me about the event in person itself and we can just chat about that.

Rory: 01:20

But I thought it'd be a good place to start just to, someone wants to talk about what things they really, how they felt about the event.

Natalie: 01:28

Yeah, I thought the speed route setting was, yeah, didn't expect that was an interesting element, yeah, maybe a band or something next time would be cool, live music, just making a spectacle of route setting.

Rory: 01:44

Yeah, I do think it would be like cool, like to have like pseudo little, like Super Bowl type things where you have a band for per event and the band comes out and plays like a twelve minute set whilst the route setters are setting and you can listen to the band and enjoy it whilst the route setters go and do their thing, which hopefully would mean they wouldn't be quite so stressed about how quickly they do it.

Natalie: 02:02

Yeah, maybe get Beyonce lined up or someone.

Rory: 02:06

Not sure they can afford Beyonce yet.

Natalie: 02:08

Bad buddy. Yeah. I don't know. But yeah, was slightly concerned about the safety aspect of speed route setting, like volumes flying off the wall or screws sticking out, but they did a good job.

Rory: 02:20

Yeah. Even just like when you're screwing in screws into holds, like, you gonna crack the the hold because you went too far too fast with the drill?

Natalie: 02:30

Cross thread.

Rory: 02:32

Exactly, because some of the new holds, which I know Absolute, which is one of the whole brands they used, that their way of setting in screws and T nuts into holds is a bit more secure and is a bit more safe. So I do wonder whether that helps with that, but I'm not sure all manufacturers do that. So I'm kind of curious, yeah, like what holds get damaged in that process? I saw some of testing, but like unsurprisingly the times in which I went to try and try and talk to athletes were when they were doing the route setting. So I didn't actually get to see any of the F1 style pit stop from resetting.

Natalie: 03:15

Yeah, I was worried like what the jeopardy of falling off a ladder or something, wouldn't wanna pull off a ladder in front of, I know I would do that. That's great.

Rory: 03:24

It's really far on those ladders on the, especially when you're on mats, just, they feel quite bouncy and like, it does not feel that safe. I'm always impressed how route setters just kind of go up these things. Like it's nothing whilst both hands are full with holes.

Natalie: 03:40

Was it Jackie Hueftle team? It was like a US led team, wasn't it?

Rory: 03:46

So I think Ian and Jackie from Kilter were there. So I think they were interviewed right on live stream. We didn't actually see any of that, I think in person, I didn't quite well. Or they showed it during the route setting resets and I was elsewhere trying to talk to people, but it sounded like, because Kolta is massively involved in this because all the walls are big Kolta adjustable walls, like in that sort of Le Mer style of walls. And then, yeah, a lot of the holes were kilter and I think they are like, I think Jackie was like director of route setting or something, I think was how she was introduced for it.

Rory: 04:33

But yeah, I'm kind of like trying to work out the route setting is something I'm like into minds over because it like, it really feels like it's a really hard job, especially for this, but it's also a job which is really thankless because I don't think anyone cares about the routes.

Natalie: 04:55

Yeah, I think I said before, I really know how the rootsetters were gonna approach it because too easy, it's a no show, too hard, it's a no show, you've got people sat on the mats. But yeah, I think it was, there are good and bad examples, but so much of it just comes down to luck as well. And yeah, but some highlights.

Rory: 05:19

I can remember the woman's final kind of because Jania slipped and I remember it because Jania slipped. I remember the men's because Max broke the beater entirely. It was kind of a cool beater, but it's maybe it was on the slightly too hard, like end of the spectrum, but Max breaking the beater and doing the jamming was really, really cool. The foot jam apparently was incredibly bummer and like he could have probably just gotten no hands from the sounds of things off the foot jam. It was so good he's good at jamming.

Rory: 05:47

And then I can remember Toby and Mejdi's race, That was fun. Maybe Colin and Tomoa, and then Mejdi and Max in the men's semifinal boulder. But like that's all the ones I can really remember. So like four boulders. I can remember four out of the 12 boulders.

Natalie: 06:03

Yeah, I felt like the quarter final ones were quite forgettable. In some ways they felt more like lead headwall routes, just kind of tick tacky moves trying to make someone slip or there weren't really any memorable. It didn't feel like modern bouldering, which was interesting, but it wasn't super spectacular. It did start to feel a bit more speed bouldery, I think, initially. But it definitely got better, like the finals, semi final and final boulders were definitely the most creative and in terms of splitting the field as well, the men's boulder was the best one for sure and the most memorable.

Rory: 06:41

There's part of me which sort of wonders, like if we had a preset list of boulders, like which they use for every comp, how much will I care about that? And I'm not sure I really do. It felt like the variety we expect from route setting in which the world cup really explores, just wasn't there at the PCL. And I don't know whether it can be, especially on walls, which were quite short. Like I felt like some of the times the climbers were gonna fall on each other.

Rory: 07:13

Like I felt like on the first boulder, I felt like Tomoa wasn't jumping to the last hole because he was afraid he'd fall on Darius. You could sort of see him being tentative on a move you'd expect Tomoa to nail every single time because Darius was at this either fell off and was in the fall zone or was on the start of the boulder.

Tyler: 07:31

Yeah, I think route setting wise, that's certainly true when it comes to like, okay, the wall is just a flat surface and it's like surprisingly few volumes in some of those cases, but you know, that's I I don't think that's necessarily the limit, but, like, you notice when you're doing an IFSC comp, of course, you have the weakest climbers coming out first and you kinda build a relationship with a boulder where you see probably like a lot of attempts on a climb and you see the moves being tried different ways, and then you get the capstone of the strongest people doing it correctly and then doing it beyond correctly, breaking the beta afterwards. Whereas in this case, if Janja comes in and breaks the beta in twenty seconds, we don't get to see the other climbers develop their way through the climb and learn how the moves go. So, we the boulders, I think, felt shallow, if only because we we that format doesn't allow you to see somebody work them. So that's one struggle. Also, like in some cases, like, probably too easy for this format.

Tyler: 08:31

Charlie and Danaan were adamant that they did not want a speed bouldering competition. This was 75% a speed bouldering competition and that's because the boulders were too easy. But you picked a format that depends on the quality of the boulders and there's no such thing as a guaranteed difficulty on a climb. No route setters are perfect. Every comp will have easy stuff and hard stuff.

Tyler: 08:56

And if you pick a competition that, you know, emphasizes the randomness of this, then you're gonna have comps like the one that we had this weekend.

Natalie: 09:05

Especially in the earlier rounds, I wasn't focusing on individual moves. Was just trying to see who'd got higher and I was just completely blanking on any detail on the problems. I think it was disappointing to see, like, as soon as someone was obviously going to top and win the round, the athletes were just giving up. Like I remember seeing, I think it was Erin once or twice, you know, I'm so used to seeing Erin fighting to the end and other athletes fighting to the end and to not have that fight and just see them give up like, oh, well, that was, yeah, kind of disappointing. But again, just all hinges on the route setting.

Rory: 09:43

Even when you have boulders, which are hard, then it still is a race. It's just a race to a lower point on the route, unfortunately, of the way people are split by time. So even like in the finals had Max not broken the beta for the men's final, then that would have been a race to that second hold. And like whoever won that race wins, especially with how they start facing out and then turning around and then running to the start holds. You do like, I'm gonna have a look at this, but I do wonder whether in some of the more race ones where they are racing, like does that, how much of that is an impact?

Rory: 10:16

Are we judging people's ability to do climbs quickly based on their ability to run to the start hold from their starting position, which feels even worse really. Instead of like having in skis and speed climb, you set the start and you're in that set point, you go from there.

Natalie: 10:31

Yeah, I thought they'd have like marked points on the mats. It wasn't clear. It just seemed like the athletes were kind of trying to gauge if they were in line with the other person then going, but it wasn't clear as I suspected.

Tyler: 10:42

Do you guys think that decided any of the races though? Like, anybody actually think that was the okay.

Rory: 10:49

Like, Toby Mejdi well, the fact is is that Toby was actually ahead for, the first half, and then Mejdi catches him up on, the top half of it. So it kind of is okay for that. But I did I was wondering, like, because that was so close. Like, was could it have been down to the speed they went to the first start holds? You could see everyone, especially on the later rounds when they didn't know how hard or not the route was going to be.

Rory: 11:11

Raced to the start and they raced as far as they could. And if it was hard, then they took their time a bit more, like on the men's semifinal ones.

Tyler: 11:20

Yeah. Just keeping in, like, the in the theme of, athlete behavior, I'm curious what you guys thought about the idea of, like, interaction between the athletes because that was another talking point that seemed like something that the organizers wanted to allow for was how do climbers behave when they can see each other climbing, when they can see that somebody's ahead of the other. Did that play out the way you expected to?

Natalie: 11:45

Yeah. I don't know. I saw there were a few, like, winking faces and smiles, but, yeah, I don't really remember any moments where they were sort of actively playing off each other. It just kind of I mean, I know in a World Cup, they have to ignore each other and there's no interaction at all. I I guess it was cool, but it wasn't.

Tyler: 12:04

They might just not have the habit of, you know, thinking that this is allowed. Right? I thought it was curious that they still read beta together in some cases. I didn't think that was gonna happen, but I also didn't really expect an observation period for this format. I'm not sure that was entirely necessary, but it doesn't really bother me.

Tyler: 12:22

But yeah, aside from, you know, the moments where, yeah, the one person standing on the mat just watching the other person top it, you know, sadly, that was kind of the only, you know, recurring interaction that we got to see. I don't know, Colin kind of getting psyched for a second to, Or sorry, no, was Mejji, I guess. No, it was Colin. Yeah. But, yeah, there wasn't any, you know, there wasn't any, like, you know, shit talking each other.

Tyler: 12:49

There wasn't you didn't see a lot of, like, laughing about, like, hard moves or anything like that. There wasn't too much addressing each other once the climate actually started. So that was, like, that was a a bit of a letdown. It's not nearly, like, one of my major complaints or anything because I think there's also room for the athletes to kinda get to know how this works and then be different next time once they get comfortable with it. Same thing with, like, racing up to the wall.

Tyler: 13:11

I think once they've done this a few times, the athletes are gonna understand, like, how important it is to get on the wall as fast as you possibly can and and treat resting differently based on different routes. So we'll see what happens next time.

Rory: 13:23

Yeah. As the difficulty kind of increases, I think you'll see a first attempt, which is a rush and then people will slow down and they go, actually, I don't, I'm not racing to, this is a hard route. That means I'm racing to get to a hold further than I'm not to get to a hold faster and I need to rest. But I think the routes just weren't hard enough. And that is the other kind of challenge you have in bouldering is that often if you have a crux, which is likely in bouldering, because that's half the point of bouldering, then it's a race to that crux.

Rory: 13:57

And you have the challenge that can someone get through that crux then becomes the question. Can it, like though you had with Max and Mejdi, which is kind of how it felt in that top section and Colin and Tamara as well in that top section, men's boulders, why that one really worked really well.

Natalie: 14:14

Yeah, I felt like the boulders needed at least two cruxes, like a lower crux so that someone might slip off that. The other person might keep going, then they might fall off a higher crux and the other person gets a chance to go back on and they're not giving up. It's not game over after in one attempt. I also felt that Max actually went against the whole rushing and like speed element because he was so relaxed and I think it must have worked well for him. I'm sure it was just a combination of all the different factors.

Natalie: 14:45

But I remember when he first went out, he was just like blowing chalk off his hands, stepped up to the wall, had to go, fell off, low down and then went and got a brush. And I was like, I was screaming at him. Was like, what are you doing? It's a race. Why are you brushing holes?

Natalie: 15:00

I just didn't expect them to be brushing and stuff, he just did it. He brushed the hold and then he won the route that was through. So it worked for him that sort of calm approach.

Rory: 15:13

I think it varied. I think some of the athletes definitely talked about how they would see them at the court. Like Max talked about this, seeing them at the corner of their eye and like checking where they were whilst on the climb. Whilst I think some just focused on themselves. Like Erin talked about that she was able to not focus on the other athlete and just focus on herself.

Rory: 15:32

While I feel like most of the athletes really were aware of the other one. And some of them were, I don't think they necessarily were trying to psych each other out. To say, I think some athletes tried to go faster and put the other athlete under pressure, but I didn't like, you could see that in Camilla and Erin, like Camilla was ahead of Erin on that, on the second boulder and Erin was moving slower and it took a little bit of time until, yeah, and Erin kind of made it through and then got, I managed to then just do the top quite quickly after that. But Erin was just a bit slower, but more methodical And Janja kind of was as well against Lucia. Lucia really tried to push.

Rory: 16:19

And I think that's one of the things which really shows you that this is a racing format because athletes push with the time and with the speed. If this was not a racing format, people wouldn't be pushing.

Tyler: 16:29

I frankly think that if you are going to go with individual boulders and you're gonna go head to head, that that is like, that is a pill you've chosen to swallow and you have to be ready for this situation. Sometimes you will have boulders where it feels too fast and it feels like the action is over with and the snap of fingers. And then other times you're gonna have boulders where the audience complains that nobody got to the top and the athletes like couldn't break the crux. Hopefully, you achieve a happy medium, you know, at least half the time, but that's like there's there's really, in my opinion, nothing you can do about this. I would say if this is the format you choose, you swallow that this this is the risk you're gonna take and you just try to make everything else good.

Tyler: 17:10

Right? I think that was one weakness that I felt from the comp that I think could be easily improved upon. I shouldn't say easily. I wouldn't know how to improve upon it, but I'm sure somebody in the Red Bull media, you know, behemoth can figure it out. I felt like when when somebody when somebody won their race and it was now, you know, okay.

Tyler: 17:34

Congratulations. You've moved on to the next step. They didn't spend a lot of time addressing that moment. And, of course, there wasn't much buildup to that because the boulders were so short and fast. You couldn't really build up to that moment of release.

Tyler: 17:47

But we didn't get to see brackets really partway through the competition. And so it wasn't very easy to track, you know, what had happened so far, or we couldn't say, you know, okay, Tomoa won this duel. Let's find out who he's about to climb against. If he ends up climbing against Mejdi, well, they have, you know, similar styles, and Mejdi is kinda considered the person that's taking over the torch or dynamic bouldering from Tomoa. But if he ends up climbing against, you know, whoever else, you know, they're antithetical styles.

Tyler: 18:17

We didn't get too much time to actually look at what had happened so far and what could happen next. And I thought that was a big weakness in both the visuals that were presented, which were completely lacking in that regard, but then also in the commentary. And I just think that's because the commentators didn't have the tools to do it in this instance. So that's one thing I would try and fix for the next competition for sure.

Natalie: 18:42

It also wasn't very clear to me, at least watching at home, whether the athletes were aware of who was winning throughout the climb. Like if nobody had topped, it wouldn't be very easy as an athlete to know what the other person has reached exactly. And I didn't know if they had some kind of indication on those side panels at either end of the mats or if they just sort of guessed that roughly from where they fell off. I thought maybe some kind of light system at the top of the wall might help sort of tell them that, you know, where you got to, that's the high point. Yeah, I just didn't really know what they were thinking and whether they knew exactly what they needed to do.

Tyler: 19:23

What was visible in the venue? Because for us, we had an overlay that would say like this climber made it to the fifth of seven holds and this climber had made it to the sixth of seven holds, but it didn't say who had gotten there first, I don't think. Was that

Natalie: 19:35

It said leader.

Tyler: 19:37

Oh, did it? Okay.

Natalie: 19:37

It said leader above, but it wasn't very noticeable. I didn't miss it at first.

Tyler: 19:41

I I I didn't notice that. Was were those, like, you know, progress indicators visible to the crowd, Rory?

Rory: 19:46

So the scoring in the stadium was quite a bit was in front of the wall. So you had the wall and then it was quite in front, which is, this is the thing which I, one of the things I love the most is I had live scoring above the wall. Come on world climbing, this is what we need, not on the side, witness scrolling. And what we need to know is what's going on now. But no, I don't think they did know what the actual scores were at a time they had clocked big clocks in the corners.

Rory: 20:11

And I don't know, but the routes were quite, most of them were quite short, like eight, I think one was maybe 11 moves long, but like eight, seven moves. And I think they just kind of knew roughly where they had gotten to and that was how they judged.

Tyler: 20:26

It wasn't clear to us at home who had won the Mejdi Tobe race even by the time the next pair had come out. Was it clear to you guys? Because that was that was, like, the first moment where you're like, oh, they've actually missed some things in terms of how the scoring is communicated.

Rory: 20:44

So in the they did a really good job actually in the stadium because they showed this slow mo and they showed it twice and you could easily see and everybody watched it and it was kinda like a bated breath moment. It was really cool. It was easy to see in the slow mo.

Tyler: 20:59

You guys thought it was easy to see? We got the slow mo we got the slow mo too, and we weren't like nobody in the Discord was, like, willing to commit to who the actual winner was, I don't think.

Rory: 21:09

Yeah. On the slow mos we saw, and we saw it twice, it was really obvious, like, who had won. And it was like the athletes obviously knew, and we obviously knew in the stadium that Measure D beat Toby.

Tyler: 21:19

Did did the MC suggest that? Because, like, Shauna and and the other gentlemen commentating, I don't think they were willing to to give an answer.

Rory: 21:29

So Louis did a net, who was the MC, Louis Parkinson was the MC. He didn't announce it when it was confirmed by the scoring in the venue. And we'll keep going back to this. It is in many ways speed bouldering, but that's not a bad thing. It can be really fun and you can have a really cool format with that, but it is, you're testing people's ability to execute in race.

Natalie: 21:50

That's exactly what Oriane just wrote in an Instagram post talking about it really forced us to execute well, keep calm under pressure, climb efficiently. And yeah, she said it was perfect practice ahead of the World Cup season. So she enjoyed it.

Rory: 22:09

Yes, what Erin and actually every athlete said is that this is a format which values execution above all else, which for format, which at least initially Charlie and Danaan both claimed would have hard boulders. And when you think of hard boulders, you don't think of execution, but actually it is execution. And it's not just execution in terms of using your energy, but it's in terms of using your energy earlier and to get that attempt and putting in, being able to not make mistakes early on, which I think, which will be quite cool to see as if more of these PCL events happen, which I hope they do, that you'll see athletes who compete in them may get better at executing. How does that then affect world cups where executing boulders is not the biggest thing, but it matters a lot. Like this is a format ironically, which values the flash above all else and a quick flash above all else, which is something people have been calling for is that you want the flash to matter more in world cups and it does.

Rory: 23:09

And this is a format which does that.

Tyler: 23:11

Can I, like, pose a a question to everybody? Like, my my question was, so actually, let me preface this first because I I I did wanna say this. Like, now that now that Charlie and Danon have switched over from the world of, like, commentary and industry people, and now they're on the organizer side, now we can just light them up the same way I would with the IFSC. So I'm absolutely ready to take them to task for every decision and every tiny mistake they make. But the the fun thing here is if they are gonna hold more events, which they are I've been adamant that they will, I think the the one thing to recognize first is the the biggest achievement they've had was getting the sponsors and building the infrastructure and the commitments from the money, right?

Tyler: 23:56

So huge congratulations and of course, congratulations for pulling off the event itself. But I think the thing that I would say right now, and I hope they're sympathetic to this, which I I think they suggested they were, was that there is no need to hold on to this format. If they think there are things about the format that don't work, I'm guessing the investments and the commitments from all of their partners is not contingent on the format itself. And if they wanna make changes, they should. Do them now while you still have the backing of all these companies.

Tyler: 24:28

Change something up for next time. And I think the the thing I'd really like to see them reconsider, first of all, is addressing the downtime, but also probably giving us more time to savor the duel between the finalists than in the qualification. I honestly think switching from BO three qualifiers and BO one finals, reverse that to BO one qualifiers, BO three finals. Like, if we're doing so few boulders in the first place, there are gonna be upsets all the time. You get to decide where you want them.

Tyler: 25:01

But the fact that we spend an hour on qualifiers per gender and then we got, you know, literally thirty seconds of finals per gender, really didn't feel like a satisfying experience. My engagement in this event went down over time, and I waited three and a half hours to watch some of the best climbers in the world spend a piddly amount of time on the finals. And I think even though we had the two extremes, you know, the men going right down to the end of the clock and the women pretty much flashing it, it's gonna be somewhere in the middle. And a two minute final doesn't do it for me if it's Oriane versus Janja or whatever the biggest men's names are. So I think it's worth reconsidering things in that ballpark, whether it's that suggestion or not.

Tyler: 25:48

I just say don't don't oversubscribe to this format if you can see obvious weaknesses so far. And I think the duration of the event and lack of climbing is, like, the obvious weakness for spectators right now, and I'm sure you guys agree, I'm guessing.

Natalie: 26:04

Yeah. I think I did some quick maths when I was struggling to fall asleep after maybe it was the evening.

Tyler: 26:09

It was that exciting?

Natalie: 26:10

Think it must have been about Well, Louise did the scientific thing, which said it was really exciting. Yeah, the heart rate monitoring. But I think I worked it out, it would be about fifty minutes climbing, but not even because a lot of people topped with A

Tyler: 26:25

lot of flashes.

Natalie: 26:25

Twenty seconds or whatever. Yeah, around fifty minutes of climbing out of the whole three and a half to four hours, so that's not great value for money in terms of climbing. But yeah, I think I agree that having multiple rounds for the finals would be more exciting and worthwhile than the qualifiers. It was a shame that we missed out on, and I don't think we've mentioned this yet, the third boulder. We never got to see that yellow slab boulder.

Natalie: 26:53

Rest in peace. Like, yeah, I thought that was not ideal, that it came down to two boulders. I think it should be best of three, something like that.

Tyler: 27:07

Rory, what did you guys think? How did the vibe in the building change over time?

Rory: 27:13

It did feel like it dragged, did the qualifiers, I think because it was new and it was exciting and different. I think that two hours went maybe a bit faster for some of us. And especially as I was going backstage to try and interview people and wait there, instead of just watching the resetting. We didn't get a lot of the prerecorded videos apart from the app like introduction ones in the venue, I think. And so, which it sounds like the TV broadcast really benefited from a lot of that stuff.

Rory: 27:49

I kind of feel like the IFSC /world climbing, oh, world climbing, I don't make that mistake so many times this year. That they're still called world cups, world climbing, sorry.

Tyler: 27:58

Follow ifsc.tv on twitter.com, come on, man.

Rory: 28:05

But world climbing have squeezed every single drop of non climbing out of a world cup final broadcast. They have even gotten to the point where they've got two climbers climbing at the same time on different boulders in order to speed it all up. And you have no space for storytelling within that. Whilst here, I feel like they did the opposite. They were like, I'm gonna have the least amount of climbing, most amount of storytelling.

Rory: 28:32

And he's like two extremes and I kind of want something in the middle. I want a bit more storytelling in world cups. I want them to spend an extra half hour, like get to see the athletes, to see the interviews, get to know how things are going, tell the story. And I think here we want to see a bit more climbing and a bit less introduction of things. It did feel like this was the opposite route.

Rory: 28:54

The IFSC was like, let's take climbing and then let's try and maximize that amount of climbing and make it just to have lots of climbing and not worry about everything else. And here it's like, we're to take a standard sports broadcast and we're going to fit climbing inside it. And we're to have all the standard sports broadcast things of interviewing and explaining stuff and having people talking behind the scenes and having mid breaks and all that stuff. And then you have climbing is like ancillary to that. And it's kind of just a vehicle for the athletes and for the story more so than being central stage.

Rory: 29:26

Whilst in world cups, the climbing is central stage, the boulders in a boulder world cup are central stage, which is quite like they're two, they feel like two extremes and I kind of want something in the middle.

Natalie: 29:39

Yeah, I think watching at home, the athlete introduction videos just got quite repetitive, especially because most of them just focused on the new format and like what do you think of this or what, or not even what do think of this, what do you think it will be like because they hadn't obviously competed at that point, they were pre recorded. I just felt there was more room for narrative because there was a lot of satellite events and there was a seeding round but we never really got to hear the story of how, well first of all the wild card round, like how Max and Jenny actually got to be there, that's quite a cool story. And then the seeding round apparently the boulders were really exciting, we didn't see that much of that. Yeah just more of a narrative around the community, how the community is built into these events and meeting the athletes. I think that would have been quite interesting or more interesting than the repetitive athlete intros.

Tyler: 30:38

I think they should have a panel of three people in the rest period talking about climbers. Maybe you've got somebody that's a long time climbing journalist, maybe somebody that crunches the numbers, maybe a non British person

Tyler: 30:55

I'm just saying a little bit of diversity, you know, I could suggest some people, but, you know, I think they should use that in the breaks. Yeah, I think you're entirely right about the allotment of time, and I'm I'm I I think that especially with, like, this is the one time like, the one out of 10 time where the person from the wild card actually, you know, wins the thing.

Tyler: 31:17

It would have been great to have that storytelling for sure. But even if it is just, you know, one or two people that can on the fly talk about the development of the story rather than having to have, like, video crews at the wild card and all that stuff, because that is expensive and has a lot of time outside the actual, like, shooting hours, Maybe you just need a second pair of people that can just talk about any top climbers. That's a genuine suggestion. So that you can fill that time, give Shauna and and I still forget his name. Give them a break.

Tyler: 31:50

Okay. Bryn. Gotcha. Anything to fill that time because whether it was the the resetting times or whether it was the mandatory break time to give the athletes enough rest before they come out for the next climb, The little athlete videos weren't enough to fill those time slots. And I think, you know, Shauna and Brynn, the idea of filling three and a half, four hours just between the two of you, especially when there's so little to talk about actually happening at the event, that's, like, gotta be one of the hardest jobs in commentary.

Tyler: 32:21

So I think I think that load needs to be lightened a little bit. Can I can I throw a quick idea out? Like, what if what if the qualifying happened on a previous day and was prerecorded? And then you just show everyone the prerecorded qualifiers, no breaks in between the climbs, and then we go straight to a live semifinal. Anyway, I'm like, we're not in charge of this, but I think there was it was simply too long an event.

Tyler: 32:44

They gotta figure out how to tighten it up in my opinion. That's my my biggest feedback.

Rory: 32:49

So I I was at the seeding round, was one of the sickest competitions I've ever seen for especially for like because it was, so it's held in the Font Wandsworth, which has a Titan wall, which is where all the boulders were set. And you would, all of us were just standing at the edge of the mat watching the best climbers in the world, three meters away from us, just climbing some really sick boulders, like really sick boulders. They were really good.

Tyler: 33:15

Can you tell us some of the names that were there that didn't qualify through?

Rory: 33:19

Oh, no, the seeding round, everyone qualified through. It's just seeding for the round.

Tyler: 33:24

Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, I thought we talking about wild card. You're right, you're right, you're right.

Rory: 33:28

I think for the wild card, had like the best of, you had a lot of the best of Britain, other British athletes who are competing in a lot of those. So it was really in many ways unsurprising that Jenny won the wild card and it was really good of Matt, it was really cool to see Matt because I think like Zoe Petermans was there, Louise made the final, Flockhart made the final, I can't remember who else was there on the men's side. I imagine Dayan was there who won British bouldering championship. I don't know if Jack McDougall was there, but like the best of kind of British mainly, I think turned up to the wild card events, which they ran rather than it be like have that many international people turn up. But the seeding round, the seeding round, the purpose of that seeding round was not to Seeding the athletes was there, but that was not the main point of it.

Rory: 34:18

It was clearly a round design in which you get to the VIPs, the investors, the important people to be able to witness awesome climbing from three meters away and really feel the vibe and the psych and really go, this is a really cool thing I've invested in. This is really, really cool. I get to watch Jania from three meters away climb some epic boulders. I get to see, so like what the men's boulder for was like this lache under the roof inside of Titan where you have the roof and they would lache on and they jump up and it was just, it was absolutely awesome. It was a really sick boulder.

Rory: 34:55

And then I think that whole point of that round was not to really show the climbing, it was supposed to be special behind the scenes and really be intimate and not be something which was televisable. It's literally in a gym, you have a 100 people watching, It's not there to be televised. As much as people want to see it, you'd have to do it completely differently if you were to do it.

Tyler: 35:18

One of the highlights was, first of all, having a seating round, but also the seating round was great because it like accurately called all of the quarter final rounds. Right? Like, think I think they nailed the seating. So great job there. I think that like right off the bat, we could see that it clearly put the right pairs together to make sure that if there were upsets, they happened like later in the comp, which they were rewarded for.

Tyler: 35:43

So glad that happened at all and they didn't go off rank or whatever. You know, can I ask what the experience was like? I know you were working, you said, but if I had gone to this event, can you tell me like what the energy was in the crowd, you know, as they're waiting to get in there? What were the amenities like in the room? Like, I saw they didn't splurge on chairs, it looks like, but I think there was a bar at the back.

Tyler: 36:05

Like, what was the experience like? So if people thinking about going to the next one, what do you think they could expect going to this?

Rory: 36:13

It felt like you were going to a concert, which I think, which is really cool. And I think that's the vibe they're going for. It was all standing, but like so many concerts you go to, like I've been so to many concerts, which is just standing, you're in a small venue, we have like L'Oreal O2 academies where the ceiling is only like two feet above your head and it's just for where the audience is and it's hot and it's sweaty and the music just reverberates around the room, everything does and you get that kind of that effect which you can never get unless you're in like a small concert space. And so it was really, a lot of the athletes described it as electric. And I think that's a good description of of like, that feeling.

Rory: 36:53

And the crowd was a really sight crowd and the cheer for like when Yanya was announced was just insane. And then the cheering for Max and the cheering for Erin was also just crazy. It was just awesome. And it was really cool, like being there and Louis did an awesome job as MC, getting everyone really psyched about it and really getting the audience to kind of cheer when it was needed. And the athletes would also like Max did this in the finals, but the athletes would go and ask the audience for support sometimes and you'd have that interaction.

Rory: 37:26

And so that was just that. So that's like one of the events going on. They had a bar at the back and then they had, they only had two food trucks out front for, which was not enough because they opened before six before people got in and all the staff and everyone who was working there went to get their food from them and had taken most of the food. Like the Mexican had no rice or plantain chips at Chris by the time I went to get food after about six and so there was not enough food at the place. It was really, really cool having the open warmup was really cool.

Rory: 37:59

Isolation was still closed, so like the isolation behind the wall that was closed off and they had a Red Bull athlete area which they could also go to, which was closed off so they didn't, But the warm up area with a kilted ball and a spray wall those were both open and people could go and watch the athletes a bit. Think there's some of them described it as a zoo. Erin described it as a it felt like being in the zoo but not a bad thing. I think some of them were happy with being watched and being kind of appreciated for what they do. And because not many people get to see how world cup level climbers and the best of them warm up and just try hard boulders on spray or on kilter board.

Rory: 38:34

And like some of the athletes, there was no obligation on the athletes to go talk to any of the people in the crowd and some of them I'm sure did. And that is quite cool.

Natalie: 38:43

I saw an Instagram comment from someone who's said their kids said it was the best day of their life. I assume because whether they'd met the athletes, don't know, but being so close to them and watching World Cup athletes, they might not necessarily get to travel to World Cups throughout the year and all the different places. To see that at home or in The UK or wherever they come from, was clearly very special.

Tyler: 39:13

I think the open warm up wall is probably for a lot of people gonna be their most memorable part of attending that comp. Like, you know, I think there's something really special about seeing, seeing like your heroes or at least people that you just think of as like being really strong, getting to see what they look like up close. Because if you're at a World Cup, you get to see them for a few moments. They're in their ultimate like performance mode. They're locked down.

Tyler: 39:37

But okay, yeah, I get to see what it looks like when Mejdi is doing what I do at the gym and like, wow, I've climbed on that hold before. And like, he made that look so easy. And like, I think that would just be like incredibly special, especially for young climbers. So I think that's an idea to keep. And aside from the fact that a World Cup warmup is like a very different ordeal in terms of the huge number of athletes for most of the rounds.

Tyler: 40:04

I think that's honestly something worth exploring. I don't think the athletes necessarily deserve to have their entire warm up area closed off, like definitely have a private section, but I think the IFSC could gain a lot from that, even if it is like, you know, a VIP experience that the organizers are allowed to sell for a higher priced ticket or something. I think that's like such a huge asset. So I'm really glad they pulled that off for PCL.

Natalie: 40:32

I like the staging, the lights, the graphics and stuff, the Jumbotrons or whatever they're called. Yeah, I felt like maybe to avoid the speed route setting they could get two giant lazy Susan type things and set that behind the wall and they do this big reveal like some kind of eighties game show or something with smoke and pyrotechnics. I don't know, think they could do it with it would solve the problem of resetting. But yeah, I mean I'm sure that's possible. It seems like something Ned Feeley could could design Beastmaker rotating wine.

Natalie: 41:17

But yeah.

Tyler: 41:19

You have to make sure it's vibration isolated so that the climbers can't feel the route setting like jitters as they're as they're climbing.

Natalie: 41:26

Yeah. But, yeah, just overall, the production, it came across really well on the livestream at least.

Tyler: 41:38

Yeah. I think the day of execution was, like, pretty much, like, close to flawless from our perspective. I we already talked about, like, it was too long. There were too many gaps, too much, like, areas where there wasn't much to talk about, but I didn't get the sense that the people on the ground were particularly lost or befuddled by the task in front of them. It looked like it flowed correctly.

Tyler: 42:02

There wasn't a ton of confusion aside from, you know, towards the end of the comp, the climbers weren't necessarily sure what their run of show was supposed to be. I thought it was, like, very well executed on the floor. So congrats to that team. Correct about, like, the the production, like, the visuals of it. It looked professional.

Tyler: 42:20

It looked kind of equivalent to what, you know, an eSports event would look like, you know, from what I'm used to watching. So it looked like it had the fit and finish of something that people would invest in, that people would want to watch. It didn't look haphazard. So I think that was all a win in terms of execution and production. I also do just like that it's a different comp.

Tyler: 42:43

Like when the climbing was happening, I was enjoying watching the climbing. My complaint is the climbing didn't last very long. So for those thirty seconds, I was having a great time. And then it was a bit of a wait. But, yeah, I thought the route setting, like, general, the boulders were fun to watch.

Tyler: 42:59

I do like watching people head to head boulders. It's not my dream format for, you know, for like a prestige comp necessarily, but it's fun to watch while it's happening. So I think there are, like, actually quite a lot of wins for for this format and for the competition. They just got to tighten it up.

Rory: 43:20

Yeah, my favorite thing about this format is it really creates a linear story and the format itself creates the story. It's not just a production thing. You have the qualifiers, you have the semis, you have the finals and you know whoever gets to the top of that final boulder first wins or gets as high first wins. It's really, really obvious. And you have the stories, the upsets of Colin and Max in the semi finals, which was really cool.

Rory: 43:46

And you could really see how it was, you could like, it was all really easy to follow. And it like, it felt like it was a format which really prioritizes the athletes, the moments and the story over the climbing. And the climbing is just a vehicle for those athletes, which is really different from what we used to in which world cups, the climbing is prioritized. Like the boulders themselves and like who is the best climber? Like, I don't think any climbing format will ever determine the best climber as much as some climbers want it to.

Rory: 44:17

It's just impossible. Like climbing is such a complex sport, to say like this person is the best climber, that isn't how it works. You're looking at, if you want to like think about who's the best, you need decades and hundreds of thousands of climbs in order to make anything of sense, any sort of reasonable definition of who is the best.

Tyler: 44:38

Well, I'll take four I'll boulders over just, I'll take that by itself. Yes.

Rory: 44:43

Try and do that on one day. It's like, it's never gonna happen. And it's like, fine. This is fun. It was really fun.

Rory: 44:48

It was really entertaining. It was speed bouldering, but it was also really fun. And I'm okay with that. It's a different format and it will I do wonder whether some of the athletes which will be the best in this format will not necessarily be those who are best at the world cup format. I think the men's was really obvious because that the people who really love this format, which like Colin and Max, because they absolutely adore this format.

Rory: 45:18

They were completely and utterly psyched about this format and about the execution and about the pressure and about the intensity which this format creates.

Tyler: 45:28

Yeah. I I I think that, like, we we discovered, like, pretty quickly. I've always tried to get Tomoa to be nicknamed the silver surfer because he's won so many silver medals and rather than skate style, like surf it's all the same. But, hey, he's he's not somebody that's necessarily been good at flashing boulders. He's always been the guy that can make the move work and do the biggest dinos and all that stuff, but he was never the guy to flash those moves.

Tyler: 45:53

And you saw him get punished for that stuff in this comp. He it took him multiple times to size up, you know, a particular move the right way, or he just didn't execute correctly on the first try, and it exposed a weakness that, you know, punishes him in World Cups too, but really shows up in this kind of format. So I think that's totally true. And I think the storytelling could probably follow-up on that more as well. But yeah, yeah, it's in general, like a ton of these ideas are winners.

Natalie: 46:23

I think something we've not talked about yet, which is maybe the elephant in the room is the prize money because, you know, that's very unique in athletes having, in climbing, athletes having the chance to win £10,000 in one competition or 5,000 or whatever for the top three. And I think, however many it was, but yeah I think they also maybe got an appearance fee or like all expenses covered and I think that far exceeds what the high face world climbing offers athletes. So in terms of supporting athletes, in their careers, helping them to become professional climbers or sustain a professional climbing career, it was definitely a big win.

Tyler: 47:12

I was I just wanna ask really quick, Rory. Do you know if all of the athletes had their travel and accommodations paid for? And do you know if any of them got an appearance fee, like being paid just to be there?

Rory: 47:22

So I do not know. What I do know is that they were all put up in the Intercontinental Five Star hotel next to the venue. And I think that was paid for by PCL, nothing else I know. The prize money was only for the top three. And then that prize money was really high, ten, five, two and a half K men and women.

Rory: 47:41

So it's like 35K total, but split only between six people, which really, and they're looking to increase that amount of money. And I think increase that because that increased the jeopardy, right? Like if this goes up to say 50 ks to win, and then it's only like 10 ks per second, like that's a big jeopardy. That's a lot, that's even more pressure, right? And so it'd be interesting to see how that prize money changes.

Rory: 48:06

It also is one of these things which I worry they're going to spend too much money on the niceties and that money has to come from somewhere. It's great to look after the athletes, it's great to give them massive prize money, but that money has to come from somewhere like the recent Pro Track League, which Michael Johnson sort of came up with, that was offering a 100K for the winners. And that now I think two or three years later is in liquidation, they're looking to refinance and that was not sustainable clearly for what they're doing. And in a very unsexy way, like the success of PCL comes down to Dan and then Jari's ability to get the investment and keep the investment and to make it financially viable like all businesses. It doesn't really matter.

Rory: 48:53

Does the format succeed? They can change the format to make it succeed. All those things are kind of incidental compared to do the investors and do the partners really buy into it and can they make it sustainable and not just blow up in two or three years?

Tyler: 49:08

Yeah, I completely agree. I also think that, like if you run this exact same competition and you remove half of the field and replace it with some regional people that, you know, maybe you guys have heard of for a London comp, I have never paid attention to, Your viewership is gonna be cut by more than half, I would bet. So if you can spend the, you know, I don't even know how much it would be, but, know, can you splurge on just Orion Air flight as well to get the athlete there? Can you pay €500 as an appearance fee so that when you get home from this comp, you actually made money? That is probably enough for a lot of the top 10 climbers in the world to show up to your event even if they are the ones at the comp that say, yeah, I didn't actually enjoy that much.

Tyler: 49:59

Oh, I wish I got to climb more blah blah blah. Well, we're paying you and you're coming out positive on this and it's a great sponsor opportunity. I think that would really change, you know, how how how many great athletes they can get coming out to these events. Because they are gonna start running into conflicts where the novelty goes away, and now you're saying, okay. Well, you know, if we're scheduling this event in the middle of your rest time or in the middle of your prime training time or worse in the middle of the comp season, athletes are gonna start making decisions.

Tyler: 50:27

And if it's not novel anymore and they know Yanya's showing up and their chance of winning money isn't actually that high, the least you can do is make it so that it's, you know, not an event that puts them into the red. So they'll obviously do the math on that. I trust that they'll make good decisions, but worth it if they can afford those little things. Because again, the world climbing circuit sets the bar pretty low in terms of financial returns. So if you can clear that, I think it would have a pretty big impact on the on the athletes.

Tyler: 50:57

What did you guys think about the, the what the athletes chose to wear to this comp? Because something I was a little surprised about was that we didn't see all of the athletes wearing very prominent sponsor T shirts, for instance. I guess I kind of expected here we finally have a comp where you're not constrained by your country's uniforms. Although maybe some of the countries do have rules where if you're competing, you must wear, you know, the Federation uniform possibly. But here's your opportunity if you're like a L'Asportiva sponsored athlete and that's your biggest sponsor to wear a a huge freaking L'Aspro logo on your chest, but some of them weren't wearing anything that was particularly prominent.

Tyler: 51:39

Did you guys have any expectations about that going into the comp, or did it catch your eye at all?

Natalie: 51:45

Yeah. I noticed it felt a bit more like a fashion show at times because Janja was all decked out in like full Adidas. And I think Annie and Oriane were like

Tyler: 51:57

Well, the Adidas athletes were a couple of the few that actually like, you know, they made use of that opportunity. Right? You know, it's the stripes are pretty undeniable.

Natalie: 52:05

And Annie and Oriane had the Hitori t shirt. So it felt like, yeah, quite trendy. Yeah, I didn't see any patches or badges, like beyond short bags. Lots of Red Bull everywhere understandably. But other than that, yeah, didn't really notice anything.

Natalie: 52:25

It's quite nice to see them express themselves a bit more outside of team uniforms, I guess.

Rory: 52:33

Yeah, I think I do wonder whether it will become a bit like cycling where you have people paying for various parts of the uniform. It'll be interesting to see as this thing develops, that, because they are, because that is an opportunity. And that's one of the things Danaan and Charlie have talked about is they want to make it so that sponsors feel they get more for their buck if they sponsor an athlete who's in the PCL and they can put a massive logo on their clothing. Hopefully as things go on, sponsors will see that. And I guess this has to prove that there's enough sponsorship that sponsors going, Hey, if you do this and you put wear this with this humongous logo and we've made this kit specifically for you to wear this to advertise us, then I think that will come.

Natalie: 53:19

At one point it looked, I said, Oh, have the women gone into hair and makeup? Because it did look very glam. I don't know, was just the lights or something. I don't think they had hair and makeup, but it just kind of, I think it was just the lighting and how they were dressed and stuff. But yeah, it felt quite rock and roll at some point.

Rory: 53:39

I did ask some of the judges about how easy this was to score and judge it. And apparently they felt it was a lot easier to judge because then in World Cups, because in World Cups you have essentially you have zone and you have top and you have to be really careful over what people do whilst it's both because of the route setting, but also because I think of the format, there's more margin of error for like picking holds, right? And like when they get that that aspect, and then also Climb Along, is helping, this is like the data sponsor and the people who they're working with. So they have cameras set up on each of the boulders to capture the movements of the climbers. And so they get separate, they also get separate data of the athletes moving on the border.

Rory: 54:24

So just tracking data, but also looking at the limbs and when they hit certain holes. So you kind of know they can have that information as well. I don't know if that's being used live. I think just the judging is being used live, but they have that information afterwards, which I'm looking forward to play around with.

Tyler: 54:42

That's good to hear because my bias would say that, no, this is harder to judge. Like, I don't know how they word, what constitutes having a particular score, like whether you're on hold five or hold six. I don't know if they use control, stability, use, all that stuff. I don't know. But in this competition, it's as if every hold is a zone.

Tyler: 55:03

Right? So you have to judge on every single hold. And the only reason they get saved and they may think it's easier is because somebody else topped and that is obvious. You no longer have to care what the other person achieved. But if you have more climbs where everybody is only making incremental progress, I think the room for really difficult judging is even higher than it would be in a a world climbing event.

Tyler: 55:25

So so we'll see what the next one brings. It might be the it might be the opposite. We'll we'll see.

Natalie: 55:31

Especially start positions.

Tyler: 55:33

For sure, yeah.

Natalie: 55:34

Dash onto the wall and just like jump into this first move.

Rory: 55:37

I think it's more the fact that they move between the holes more rather than getting to the zone is often like, can be quite tricky. And it's like, is that valid? But also most of the athletes did not travel with coaches. I think Janja was the only one who had her coach at the event and appeals, there's a very limited window for appeals, which are done by the athletes themselves, sort of in the five minutes or so after the climb. And so don't, there aren't the judging and there isn't the appeals and all of that stuff, which you have in World Cups.

Rory: 56:15

It'll be interesting to see what happens as athletes maybe care about it more and coaches start going to these events and they start disputing the rules a bit more. The head of the guy who wrote the rule book is Saggy, who's the German bouldering coach, who's the sporting director for the PCL. So yeah, there is an 11 page rule book, which is quite nice actually. It's easy to read compared to the first Pretty

Tyler: 56:39

brief, yeah, that's nice.

Rory: 56:40

It's only one discipline and it's only like, the format in some ways is simpler. And so they don't have to worry about all a lot of the things you have in speed and lead around safety and some of weird rules which have come up over the years because of when hold spin or problems happen on lead routes. How was the Did they use the athletes' mics that often?

Tyler: 57:06

No. They used it while the desk was trying to talk. Like, honestly, the amount of time the mics turned on while the athletes were backstage and you were trying to listen to Shauna and Brynn and you would just hear random conversation, you heard way more of that than anything out on the wall. I think the only time I noticed was when the Romanian climber had a quick back and forth with one of the judges asking him just a question. But, no, like, we we didn't get to hear the climbers on the wall.

Tyler: 57:35

We didn't get to hear their thoughts or anything. So, again, I think the climbers like, most climbers really don't talk to themselves when they're on the wall. They probably and we saw they weren't really talking to each other, so it wasn't really used very much in this instance. So a bit of a bit of a thumbs down in terms of effectiveness, but, you know, whether the athlete's behavior changes or there's or they adapt to the use of that to to include what the athletes are like saying as they're about to come out on the wall. Like, you know, we had those moments where the climbers were in a mandatory rest period.

Tyler: 58:10

They couldn't come out onto the wall just yet. Take the camera to the back. Let me listen to what they're talking about in those last thirty seconds before they come out on the wall. That's interesting. But but otherwise they weren't they weren't getting used very much.

Rory: 58:22

Yeah. I do wonder whether they were just worried about various athletes dropping f bombs.

Tyler: 58:28

Oh, a 100%. Yeah. If I say anything on the wall, it's not stuff that can go out on TV. Yeah. So probably worth avoiding if you're if you're uncomfortable with that.

Natalie: 58:40

There was a bit of swearing on the livestream in the live interviews. They're like, sorry for that.

Tyler: 58:46

I was really surprised that they that they apologized for that. I don't know. I I don't really know what to expect from Red Bull TV. I don't watch a ton of their content, but I thought they could let that one pass.

Rory: 58:57

What did you think of Michaela's interviews?

Tyler: 58:59

I think the the consensus with everybody we were watching with was she was actually pretty valuable. You know, I have my own, like, nit picks and stuff, but she was asking good questions and she was getting in a lot of the instances, the climbers to talk about the climbing, which I think is the most important thing and probably the best angle to take with athletes. They're not good at talking about their feelings. So instead, ask them about why they did this move or or, you know, how they approached a particular scenario. And I think she actually was doing a good job of that.

Tyler: 59:31

So, yeah, thumbs up to that. Not so much thumbs up to having who felt like a non climber as the as the play by play. I'm assuming Shana was intended to be a color commentator and Brynn was a was a play by play. I would just find find a a climber who who or a climbing person that is, you know, half as much of a play by play as Brynn and let them grow into it. Because it just like, a lot of the most memorable, like, flubs was just moments of of ignorance.

Tyler: 01:00:04

And that's just you feel like it's kind of sticks out a bit and isn't that fun, especially when that's the only thing you have to pay attention to for, you know, five, ten minutes, it felt like in some instances, like, let me let me hear some actual climbers talk about it instead of making up stuff that's really not relevant to to what climbers experience.

Natalie: 01:00:27

Yeah. I thought it was good having a separate roving reporter to, like compared to the world climbing thing, so you have the co commented like, go and interview them now and catch that. They were just a bit more relaxed and it meant Shaun and Brinker just focused on what they were doing and Mikaela could focus on thinking of questions and watching the event close-up. I

Rory: 01:00:49

thought it would be quite fun to talk about like what should the World Climbing steal from Pro Climbing League?

Tyler: 01:00:55

Well, first thing is what Natalie just mentioned, even though that's, you know, the the the IFSC team, like, I think they've been using is his name Richard? I always forget. But they've

Rory: 01:01:07

There's Richard and there's Marco.

Tyler: 01:01:09

Right. So they've occasionally been using other people to do the interviews. It's a little bit cleaner. So so that's cool. But if you can get somebody that is a well known climber and that, you know, maybe has the time that day to pay really close attention to the climbing and has a climber's experience like a Mikayla, do that instead.

Tyler: 01:01:31

Because I know I know the IFSC people are busy during the event day, so it's pretty hard to to gear up for, like, a high quality interview when when you're switching into that role last minute. So so there's one suggestion off the top. I think giving some people access to the warm up, I think that was one of the high points from the competition. And and even just if that means putting a camera back there for a little bit so that the viewers can experience a bit more of that. I think that was really fun for us too to see to see that.

Tyler: 01:01:59

So use those assets a bit more. You know, if that means that when climbers are warming up on the warm up wall, they are open basically to being viewed. And then there's a separate, like, no camera zone, you know, sort something out. That's fine. They're in ISO for a long time in some of those rounds, so they do deserve areas where they can, you know, have privacy and catch a catnap without without the cameras catching them drooling on the floors.

Tyler: 01:02:24

But I think that was, like, a a valuable addition. In terms of like climbing and the format itself, I think they're so antithetical to each other that I don't know how much I would actually suggest as a carryover. I think having them coexist as contrasts is kind of what the goal is. So I'm not sure there's too much about the climbing itself that I would suggest. Definitely wouldn't ask the IFSC to use system boards, articulated system boards.

Tyler: 01:02:57

Not not quite my jam, but but that's okay.

Natalie: 01:03:01

Yeah. I wrote down prize money first of all, which is easier said than done, but I'm sure that's what the athletes would like most. Yeah. I put backstage, a bit more of that, behind the scenes would be good, reporting, like roving reporting. I think having a separate or a distinct commentary team rather than having the random athletes between each event.

Natalie: 01:03:28

I mean I don't know, maybe some people seem to like that but I think sometimes it works better than others but having a dedicated pair that does every event could be quite useful. I think if they could get the level of graphics and production slickness that the PCL had that would be great but it's pretty tough. I mean I think What did you guys think of the camera angles? Like the camera work and the sort of vision mixing?

Rory: 01:03:56

The only feedback I can give on that is that the photographer's got really, really annoyed at the gimbal guy on the mats because he clearly was not aware. Yeah, he would get into a lot of the shots, which made it really difficult for the photographers.

Tyler: 01:04:11

Too bad. No, no, I was, I think the best sign of the quality of the camera work is I didn't hear anybody talk about it, at least. If I go to Reddit, there's gonna be somebody that managed to nitpick a moment or something. But, no, when you've got two climbers side by side, you don't even need split screen. Just put a wide angle camera.

Tyler: 01:04:32

The wall's not even that big. And that's like one of the huge benefits of this format is it doesn't require complexity to show everybody all at once. So I think it was a win. Nobody was complaining. I didn't feel like I missed anything.

Tyler: 01:04:46

That said, it was a long event. My attention drifted, so I may have missed some bad moments, but yeah, no complaints there.

Rory: 01:04:54

Yeah, I really liked camera from the top of the wall. I wish we, I wish the world climbing would let photographers or videographer go on top of the wall and get those top down shots. It's really cool in speed when they get those trigger cameras or they get to go up, photos are awesome seeing people hit that buzzer. I would love to see more of that in Boulder and lead as well. Just having that view is just really awesome.

Rory: 01:05:21

You get to see the emotion on someone's face right at the very top.

Tyler: 01:05:24

You've been to a few World Cups. How many of those walls do you really wanna climb up behind and feel safely comfortable that you can

Rory: 01:05:31

None of them, but I still feel like it would be really cool if you could there's a way almost certainly to help to enable something to happen. I think it would be super cool if they could get that. I also understand that for a lot of these walls, that's not practical, but I think it's much easier because of the board style of the wall. You have it on the big hydraulics and you can put a ladder in the back and you can get up on top, you can put a little gangway, it's a far easier thing to deal with than a proper climbing wall, which has old manners of struts in place around the back.

Natalie: 01:06:08

Someone called it, someone on the Discord called it the ring doorbell shot because it was like this fish eye of Oriane coming up to the top of the wall. Thought it was quite funny. Also there was a camera in the women's, the one that Erin and I can't remember who it was, maybe Annie were climbing. There was like a halfway camera as they threw into this hold outright. I don't think it was used that much, but like mid wall cameras, which are quite interesting.

Rory: 01:06:39

Yeah. I think there was supposed to be some cameras that built into the wall for some of those, which again, like we have it, we've had it in speed sometimes, so some of the photographers have set up the trigger cameras at the top. It'd just be really cool if those could be video cameras and we could get those shots, are really hard to do without it being built in because otherwise you have a person there and the athlete then that just doesn't work. And so it would be cool to have some of those camera placements be used.

Natalie: 01:07:07

Surely, you surely could just build it into volume or something.

Rory: 01:07:12

And so I'd be, I think so there's two things I really would love world climbing to do. One is, and I've said this before, I want the scores on a big screen above the wall. I want it to be super obvious what each person is doing on each boulder and what their score is and how many attempts it's been. And I want it to be brutally obvious what their rank is. And I want to know like where they could get to.

Rory: 01:07:33

Like these are the really simple things people. And I want it on a big LED thing across the top.

Tyler: 01:07:39

Well, okay. You you can give some context for the people that don't go to world cups. Like there there is a huge scoreboard at these World Cups. So do you wanna explain, like, what normally shows up at an event and why you don't like it?

Rory: 01:07:50

So normally, there's a scoreboard. It's off to the side, and it will have the Sometimes it will have the overall scores and like a semi final, it will be paging through the full score list. So you don't actually know what the people on the wall, what their scores are at any point in time, which when you have, when you're watching live and you have four climbers on the wall, it's really hard to know what's going on and keep track of it. And it's also really hard to know like where they are, like what their rank is because you have this paging scorecard to the left and it's not at all obvious. Even in finals, it's not at all depending on when you're sitting, you sometimes can't see the left hand side.

Rory: 01:08:28

And then also what they'll use, they'll use that same screen, which they have for scores. They will go and put the live cameras on it. So if you're far back in the crowd, you can see what the action is like. So you actually have no score board times in the finals. So you have no clue what's going on score wise.

Rory: 01:08:46

And I just want above the top of the wall, make it really, really obvious, make it so I don't have to think, please. That's what I want. I love the fact that PCL had that. That's one thing I want. The other thing I want is I'd love for them to make the storytelling a bit more linear and bolder comps.

Rory: 01:09:04

And by that, the thing I'd love them to do is for the last boulder for athletes to come out in reverse ranking order of that round, not of the start order.

Tyler: 01:09:14

You're saying after the first three boulders, you then reorder them?

Natalie: 01:09:19

My impact rest time per

Rory: 01:09:21

Eight word, you'd have to, like, have a minimum rest time in place. Beatrice. Yeah. Which they which they don't have in the rules. So this is does not require a rule change, ironically.

Tyler: 01:09:31

Doesn't require a rule change for the first one until people realize that they just lost their default rest time of six climbers climbing, but yeah, okay.

Rory: 01:09:41

And this is what happened with Serato, right? But I think it will be, obviously it's also really hard to do because of the format with now having two climbers on two separate boulders. But I think it would be awesome if the last, for like, let's say the last boulder, you had every athlete come out in revert. So that the last athlete who comes out is the athlete who still has a chance of winning. Because having the last athlete come out in a boulder comp who has no chance of winning because of previous results really sucks.

Rory: 01:10:10

And like one of the things PCL does really well is it's really obvious who won. In lead comps, it's really obvious who won. In speed comps, it's really obvious who won. It's only in bolder world, bolder competitions. It's not at all obvious in times who has won.

Rory: 01:10:23

Just like in Innsbruck last year when like Sorato came out and he fell twice and then Toby magically had won.

Tyler: 01:10:28

I would get behind that suggestion as as something to try out. Like, there might be little hang ups that that we haven't thought about, but I would I would second that. Somebody, if you're running a World Cup format, try that at your next comp. I think that would be really cool.

Rory: 01:10:41

I just really would find it really interesting if we have the athlete who is in first come out last at the end of a body That would be really cool.

Tyler: 01:10:50

Yeah. Actually, we're doing we're doing a comp in the spring. Maybe I'll I'll talk to the I'll I'll talk to the and if we do it, I'll I'll I'll let you know how it goes. That would actually be a cool idea. Okay.

Tyler: 01:11:00

Writing that down.

Rory: 01:11:01

Yeah. Those are the two big things for me, which I really want.

Tyler: 01:11:04

And and I should say the one the other thing too, like a big difference is logistically, the number of athletes at this competition was very small compared to a World Cup. But if continental rankings and continental series develop, you could be looking at a World Cup in the next five years where it's not implied that every country gets to send a default amount of climbers, which they they're getting closer and closer to that every year as the as the quotas go down. You might be looking at World Cups where there are 40 people that attend, or maybe you cut qualifiers and you just have the top 20. That really depends on the continents getting consistent, reliable systems down. But, yeah, maybe in the future, we're talking about how can you make a comp last one day per gender, right?

Tyler: 01:11:47

Yeah, who knows? They might actually take more from this than we expect.

Rory: 01:11:53

Yeah, and then the PCL will probably go the other way. It would be great if they expanded the number of athletes to say 16 people. Like if you expect the men's field especially, you could add an extra eight top athletes in the world and the quality would not change in any way whatsoever. And not all of those athletes have to be from Japan either. And same in the women's, you could easily add another eight athletes and there is bigger disparity in the women's field, but you can still add an extra eight athletes from the world cup.

Tyler: 01:12:22

We're not doing it on the same day, are we though?

Rory: 01:12:26

No, that's the thing, right? But then you have to work out like, how would that work? How would they do that? Would they still want, what would the seeding round be? What would the format be like?

Rory: 01:12:35

How would you deal with that? That would be really cool to interesting to see how they'd expand say 16, which is I think a more reasonable number of people to have in a pro league. Like I think surfing has 24 in both men's and women's, well in men's and then they have less in women 18 or 16, and then they have a cut mid season down to a smaller number. But having like 16 athletes competing like in the pro climbing league, top league throughout a whole year and they go to each comp and they have to, and then if you're in the bottom one or two, you get relegated or you can choose to not accept your invitation, which is what is happening in surfing and will probably happen in pro climbing league once we hit Olympics. It'll be interesting to see how this format survives the Olympic cycle of 2027, 2028 in which twenty twenty seven world cups will matter to most athletes more than anything in the world because they want to be going to the Olympic qualifier series in '28 to get to the Olympics.

Natalie: 01:13:33

I do think it's interesting. Like a lot of athletes have complained about how many events they have on through the year, especially when it comes to Olympic qualifying. So I'm interested to see how how they think this will fit alongside those events and whether that they drop off, as you say, in numbers.

Tyler: 01:13:52

Yeah. It wouldn't be the first sport league that has to deal with that problem. But the year is long and especially a comp like this so deeply out of the comp season, you know, I think it's it's all possible. We'll see how they how they choose to do it.

Rory: 01:14:06

And if they're willing to put you up for each event and they're willing to look after you and the prize money is there, the incentives are there. And the format in some ways is potentially even a bit more random than standard world cups that even if you're at a lower seat, you can make it into say a semi final or something, and if prize money does expand beyond the bottom, if you essentially go to the top four, get prize money, which means if you win your quali route, you get some decent amount of money and it doesn't cost you anything to go there or something, then it's worth chancing it even in a season where you might care about world cups, but this comp may actually help you go to world cups. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Inside Climbing Podcast. If you want more information about competition climbing, you can follow me on inside.climbing on Instagram, or you can subscribe to my newsletter at inside-climbing.com.

Tyler: 01:15:08

Speaking of going to events, would you not if you weren't working it, would you go to the next PCL event if you assume it's the same format, same structure, same duration as this one?

Rory: 01:15:21

If it was in Europe, I would consider it.

Tyler: 01:15:25

Knowing you like you are towards the like crazy end of caught I

Rory: 01:15:30

think if it was in Europe, think I would consider it. If it in The UK, would definitely get trying. I would definitely go. Like even if it was in say Edinburgh and I had to get all the way up to Edinburgh to it, it's complicated a bit in Europe by how much holiday I have to take in order to go to other comps and also have non climbing holidays. I do, yeah.

Rory: 01:15:51

I don't have many of them and so I need to make the most of it.

Tyler: 01:15:54

If the format doesn't change significantly, I will not watch the next one live. Like four hours was too much of a commitment on the middle of a Saturday for me. So for me, it ran from 02:30 in the afternoon to about 06:00. That was too much for too little climbing. So if it happens again with the same format, I will skim the highlights and just look at the sends.

Tyler: 01:16:18

But I I will not commit that much time to a format with so much dead time. That's my takeaway from from watching it the first time.

Natalie: 01:16:26

Yeah. I would definitely go if it was in The UK, I think. And I might actually get tickets and they didn't sell out quickly. But, yeah, I think if I happened to be in a place where it was and or there was yeah. I don't know.

Natalie: 01:16:40

I it I don't know how much tickets we're selling for either, but people seem willing to pay for them. So

Tyler: 01:16:48

If there was one near here, I would go once. Although, I would really hope there are chairs because I can't.

Natalie: 01:16:53

Mhmm. Yeah.

Tyler: 01:16:55

Backy. I can't stand that. I won't go to a concert that's standing only for two hours. Like, I won't even do that. So that that would have been too much for me.

Tyler: 01:17:03

So I'll go once if it shows up, but I'm not gonna watch the livestream again.

Rory: 01:17:06

So if it was in New York and you had to travel there, would you do it, Tyler?

Tyler: 01:17:11

New York? No. Absolutely not. No. And part of that part of that is there is a different climate about Canadians traveling right now that I'll be honest, I'm slightly affected by.

Tyler: 01:17:23

But, no, that is New York is, like, for me, that's, you know, only, like, an hour and a half flight maybe or a ten hour drive, but that's very expensive to go to a four hour boulder competition where not much happens. I I would not do it. If it was in Toronto or in, you know, even Montreal, I would consider it. But but otherwise, no.

Rory: 01:17:44

Thanks both.

Natalie: 01:17:45

No worries. That was fun.

Tyler: 01:17:47

Yeah. It was it was nice chatting about it. Yeah. Yeah. And it was honestly nice to have something new to talk about.