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pellucidYesterday evening I went to watch the finals of the MEC Canadian Bouldering Championships. There are plenty of talented climbers at my gym, but this was my first experience watching really elite climbers all up close and personal-like: wow!!! Highly recommended, if you get the chance! I'm coming away from it impressed but also inspired. No, I will never climb even a fraction as well as these people, but they make me want to get better.
I also really loved the atmosphere of the spectators. If people were rooting for particular climbers it wasn't evident. Rather, everyone cheered for everyone: collective gasps and shouts for every jaw-dropping move, collective groans when people fell, and mostly just a lot of "come on, you've got this" yelled from the crowd, as if we were the friends and fellow patrons at the local gym, all cheering each other on. It's an attitude that makes an already beautiful sport even more so.
And I confess I had never thought about how much the route-setting affects these things--though I suppose I should have. In the women's competition, the problems seemed a bit easier compared to their abilities: some people sent each problem, and I believe the winner sent all five, most on her first attempt (she was amazing!!! gravity? what gravity???). Whereas in the men's, there were at least two problems that no one sent and two others (of five) that only one or two people managed to send. The ideal, I suspect, would be something in between: the women's might have been a bit too easy, and the men's was almost certainly too difficult. But I imagine it's probably very difficult to determine these things ahead of time when you're the route-setter (even though I know they spent a tremendous amount of time working on the problems).
Anyway, if you get a chance, go watch amazing people climb things!!!
I also really loved the atmosphere of the spectators. If people were rooting for particular climbers it wasn't evident. Rather, everyone cheered for everyone: collective gasps and shouts for every jaw-dropping move, collective groans when people fell, and mostly just a lot of "come on, you've got this" yelled from the crowd, as if we were the friends and fellow patrons at the local gym, all cheering each other on. It's an attitude that makes an already beautiful sport even more so.
And I confess I had never thought about how much the route-setting affects these things--though I suppose I should have. In the women's competition, the problems seemed a bit easier compared to their abilities: some people sent each problem, and I believe the winner sent all five, most on her first attempt (she was amazing!!! gravity? what gravity???). Whereas in the men's, there were at least two problems that no one sent and two others (of five) that only one or two people managed to send. The ideal, I suspect, would be something in between: the women's might have been a bit too easy, and the men's was almost certainly too difficult. But I imagine it's probably very difficult to determine these things ahead of time when you're the route-setter (even though I know they spent a tremendous amount of time working on the problems).
Anyway, if you get a chance, go watch amazing people climb things!!!
