Boulderactive 2010

[sgclimb]

With one of the biggest turnout ever, Boulderactive 2010 was a paradox of sorts. The wall is high, but the space is sparse. People can't eat and watch sitting on the floor. Some climbers are congenital litterers. The routes are not bad. The scheduling is good, etc. But these are just my personal thoughts. What do you think?

Let us know so we can improve, so we can make it better!

Ben Toh
SCA

[aidi.ruddin]

hey,
the venue is cool.
but sort of restricted. you can't sit here, can't stand there, don't this here, don't that there.

in terms of this, i would say that the venue for gravical, although like it's hot and not sheltered, but it felt more comfortable and 'free'.
the wall is also like a little bit slippery?
after climb, my shoe got marks. the paint i think. haha.
but it was great! the height. fuh.

but the routes are great, not like hard(impossible) but hard(finishable) which makes it fun.

but what i like most about boulderactive is that they got medals! lols.
ok, must get ready to go training. have to be there before coach does.

best regards,
aidi
climb.republic!

[summerstage]

Hi Ben!

I liked Boulderactive in the sense that I thought it was pretty well-organised with not much unnecessary delays. The routes were nice too, hard but that's good cos it gave everyone a challenge. Orchard Central was also nice (very central location!) apart from the 1. freezing air-con and 2. annoying security 3. lack of space but I guess those can't really be helped.

I think most people would agree that there were quite a number of injuries this time. It's either people don't know how to fall properly or the mats are poorly arranged - I personally think it's a combination of both. Perhaps more could be done about the mats?

Anw, that's just my take. Overall I thought it was good, I enjoyed myself (: Thanks NUS!


-Bernice

[sgclimb]

>> Orchard Central was also nice (very central location!) apart from the 1. freezing air-con and 2. annoying security 3. lack of space but I guess those can't really be helped.

Orchard Central is simply unsuitable. The management of the mall wanted to host a sports event, but want the spectators to behave as if they are watching golf! A mismatch of expectations on both OC and NUS i guess. Probably not ever going back.

About the injuries, i believe both the climbers and NUS should share some responsibilities. For some, they landed in the gap between the mats, for others, they either didn't land properly, don't know how to land, or had prior injuries.

Not excusing NUS, or the climbers, but even when the mattresses are perfect and the climbers know how to land, there'll still be injuries due to Murphy's Law. Still, I hope better coordination can be had between the organisers of Boulderactive, Gravical and Pumpfest in 2011, to ensure that the mattresses are adequate for all events.

results for JC bouldering league to be out soon....

[Winson]

Chill bro, i guess the message was not properly passed down to the security guards. I was totally annoyed by them as well. While watching the Open Finals, I was constantly chased away by the security guards despite leaving enough space for 2 to walk through easily. I gave up and decided to forgo watching the Men and went over to the less crowded area where I can watch the Women's action in peace. I do agree that Orchard Central is unsuitable. The area is too small to accommodate to the large number of spectators including those shoppers who stopped by to catch a glimpse of the excitement.

Regarding the injuries, I have a suggestion to reduce the problem. This is something I always do when I am the organiser. Whenever the routes are done up, I would go one round the walls to check out all the routes, visualising the routes and imagining the possible crux and possible barn-doors where the climbers might fall. When possible, I would do this with the route setter to reduce time needed for this procedure. Once I identify the "danger zones" I would ensure that the crashpads are there to cover that particular spot and the brief the spotter on that as well so that he/she would not be taken by surprise when the climber does fall. Anticipation from the spotters would certainly reduce the amount of injuries due to poor spotting or poorly placed crashpad and in some cases poor landing by the climbers.

Now for my own observations of Boulderactive, I think generally everything went smooth with no hiccups. Route changing were pretty smooth. Not much delays. Judges were properly briefed and competent. Results were out pretty quickly. Events starts on time. So good job NUS. But for the not so good points, I would say the Open finals were a little boring. For all the good work in the previous days, I guess everyone must have tire themselves out especially since its back to back with Gravical, the route changing took a really long time. And I couldn't figure out why the ladies were given such a long break between their 3rd and 4th route. Im not sure if the routes clash though.

And for the route wise, I feel that the Open final routes for both the Men and Women were a little too static. Seems like most if not all are very technical and balancey moves and hardly any dynamic moves that we are so used to seeing in the Open Finals that gets the audience going. The route seems to be too hard for the climbers as well and due to the lack of tops, the audience could hardly get going until Jenson decided to put his finger at risk by sticking his finger into the bolt hole of the tile on the last route. A total of 6 tops were accomplished by the men and 10 tops by the women (but if we don't count the way too easy first route, its only 2). This compared to 9 tops by the men and 13 tops by the women in the Open Final of Gravical goes to show how much little the audience get to cheer and scream for their favorite climbers. Remember those times when the climbers campus and wave to the crowd at the same time and got everyone so excited and inspired? I personally prefer a good mix of dynamic and technical routes so as not to favor any type of climber and give the audience something to cheer for. Im sure the climbers would like to hear more cheers from the audience in appreciation of the hard work they are putting in.

These are just my personal opinion and observation and in no way do I mean to degrade the route setters or organisers or anyone involved in the competition. I just want to share my honest views. So cheers~

**EDIT: made a mistake on the number of tops by the women

[sgclimb]

I will feedback to Jay about the Open Finals. In case you are curious -

For Gravical - Chief Route-setter is Junbin, assisted by Garick and Ben Toh.
For Boulderactive - Chief Route-setter (Open cat) is Jay Koh, Chief Route-setter (Novice and Inter) is Ben Toh.

There is still alot to learn in route-setting, especially the concurrent format in the open finals. The delay in changeover is unfortunate due to a popped T-nut, and then a broken hold. Suay.

But i agree that the last route should be a rousing finale, which Boulderactive was actually, minus the dynamic moves. Will remember that for Pumpfest. Get ready to JUMP!

[Jay]

Hi All,

Thanks for all the kind feedback. Let me just start off by saying that setting Open category routes is by no means an easy task. A lot of experience is involved. On top of that, there are not many ppl in Singapore who are capable of testing those routes. One man's meat is another man's poison. A dynamic move can be planned but at the end of the day, there will always be some ppl doing the intended dynamic move statically. A good example would be the move to the bonus on the men's open final route. Some of us could do it statically during route testing whilst some must do it dynamically.

In case you're thinking why not just set the move as an all out dyno, then what happens if only a few of them could do that dyno? Won't that make it super anti climax esp during an open's final event. Needless to say it will be super demoralising for the climber who cannot even do the move.
And then there is another thing known as limitations brought about by the inclination or the design of the wall. If the wall space is too small, handholds will have to be really small or slopey or all the top climbers will look like they are warming up on the wall. If that happens, we're gonna have a big problem. And THAT is a TIE, which all routesetters DREAD.
I could go on and go but bottom line is route setting ain't that easy after all eh??? Too many things to take into consideration.

Overall, my personal take is that the final routes for men and women could have been a little bit easier. Just a tad. (with the exception of route 1 for the girls - too easy !) Notice that the last routes for men and women consisted of a bigger surface area. I decided to combine 2 walls together during route setting. Reason is simple. Bigger wall, bigger surface area, bigger moves, less constraint and less wrecking of brain juice during route setting. My personal take is that open cat final routes should have a good mix of being technical and dynamic (spectator friendly). Too much of either one is def a no-no.

THe female climbers had to wait quite a while before climbing the last route. Reason being a T-nut popped and a foothold broke during the setting up. Running around trying to find a replacement tile and fixing the t-nut ain't funny, i can garantee you that !!!

[Winson]

Ahh, so thats y there was a long break. Yes, I totally understand your pain when tiles break and T-nuts popped. especially when the its the last route of the event. Haha.

On the issue of the difficulty in setting Open category routes, I could understand that as well, which is why I did not say the routes were bad or lousy. I know its really tough to set routes when you do not have many options for route testers. The last route was really nice especially since there are several ways of solving it. Whether to jump or to static depends on individual style. Yes, route setting is very difficult to do so no blaming involved. We are all learning through more experiences and with feedbacks, we can all improve. I guess thats what this thread is all about.

I missed this out in my previous post but I think most would agree with me that one or two campus would be really nice to watch for Open Men. But once again, its not that easy to make everyone campus. Perhaps hazlee might just stand up to reach, Ponti might just do a drop knee and lock like crazy to reach, then jensen would do a super high step, perhaps Ron could show us a dyno, Irwan would probably just campus anyway. A route which has multiple possibility is interesting as well..

I would say its a job well done no matter how you look at it. keep up the good work!

For the venue, I honestly think that Velocity @ Novena Square is a good place to hold comps. I believe the management would be willing to provide the venue for free as it is in line with their theme. The management was really nice and accommodating last year and provided some of the freebies you see in the goodie bag. If there is no new shopping malls opening and willing to provide a free venue, perhaps velocity can be considered.

[Garick]

I'll probably sum up my points on the routesetting part as both Ben and Jay have expressed most of the concerns.

We are pretty used to watching overseas bouldering comps on Youtube et al but we fail to realise how much wall space they have, both height and width. By means of 'engaging' routes, first thing that comes to everybody's mind is a dyno or a campus.

However:

1. Dyno+short wall+tight width = a route with 4-5 moves to completion. Not to mention, hard to get creative.
2. Dynos which are insanely hard = multiple tries with seperation of the climbers on the route with just purely based on number of tries to latch the hold.
3. What is a Dyno to me would just simply be a deadpoint/static to some
4. Of course we can always choose to combine two walls into one huge wall to allow more interesting routesetting, but that would also mean slower transition of routes = longer waiting time in isolation OR bad filtering because we have only 4 routes instead of 6 (for preliminaries)

What we strive to do is to set creative routes. And creativity takes time ! And time is something that is always not on our side when it comes to competitions:
1. Most of the routesetters/routetesters are working and can only spare their evening after work time or weekends.
2. Chief Routesetters are not paid, or paid miserably to be even worth taking leave to manage+set routes.
3. Walls are usually up 2-3 days before the comp ? Plus point 1, it becomes a deadly combo.

I think we must not forget the climbers who also put in their time in helping out to set routes ! Maybe we should name the route after the routesetter in future My personal feel is, in terms of Organising Competitions, we have came a long way. Routes are definitely more fun and unlike the past where its "hard for hard sake" and you finish the compeition feeling all shitty just because you cannot even start the route nor finish any at all. There is a still a lot to learn in perfecting the art of competition setting, and it is going to be a steep learning curve. With no professional guidance, we can only "try and error"

I must say that the Climbers themselves provide more entertainment this time around and hyping up the crowd to a higher level ! Maybe we can put a "rule" that they have to finish the route with a bang, and earns style points for that

Winson, I personally do appreciate constructive comments like yours so please do continue to feedback ! This is also very helpful to us in our learning process. You can also consolidate feedback from your peers and post it, if they are not aware of this forum. Or you can inform them about this avenue of feedback to see a better competition (Pumpfest) or even a better league next year !

*edit: added another point

Cheers
Garick

[ian_]

only watched the Open finals.

venue
I think indoor venues are very good, unfortunately OC was a little cramped up for the audience. It was raining on sunday if anyone remembered, i guess despite the stupid security and all that squeezing around...i would still prefer a cold aircon crampy place over humid hot crampy place.

routes
like what garick said, routes these days are much better than last time la. Last time join Men's Open can't even do the start of all the routes....hahah..maybe i still can't do the start of all the mens' open route!!

Good to see evolution in our climbing scene!

ian ang