Ai's TWO SIDES, Janja Ties The RECORD, RARE Podium Sweep - Innsbruck Boulder/Lead World Cup
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ส.ค. 2024
- It ain't climbing unless we're arguing about height, and it aint rhyming unless I'm posting at night
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Thumbnail photos: Lena Drapella/IFSC - กีฬา
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I love AI Mori ❤❤❤
The thing about Ai's struggle on W1 is that it was not climbing being tested by that first 'move', no one would argue it's unfair or bad setting if she struggles on a typical dynamic move once on the wall, and everyone would agree that's fair enough - just like how her strength to weight ratio is insane her explosive power is among the worst in the field, but jumping off the mat in my opinion just isn't the same as a test of her actual explosiveness as a climber.
Just like the last time it happened it felt like she was completely shut out of options for no good reason.
Obviously routesetting is incredibly hard, but women's semis were pretty far off the mark over all.
For static moves routesetters can measure the distances but for dynamic moves it’s difficult. You could also say ai should train more jumps like basketball players or volleyball players. Which would create more weight on the legs. And since her main focus is lead that might be a disadvantage for her.
I think boulder 1 was just miserable to watch. I hate when getting onto the wall is a stopper move. If you want to make Ai jump, make her jump on the second move, not to get off the ground. Yes, someone of that height could do the jump with stronger legs, but I'd much rather watch her start the climb even if that does fail to test her leg power. And again, you could still test her leg power with a big vertical jump deeper into the climb.
At the end of the day, this is a spectator sport, especially nearing the olympics. Experiences being bad for spectators should be taken into account.
I agree that boulder 1 was just pathetic for everyone. And for this reason alone, IFSC should apologize to everyone. Maybe it should even remove this boulder from the point calculations. Why? Because jumping from a different hold or volume is one thing and jumping from the mat is another. The mat absorbs energy and jumping a little higher requires disproportionately more energy. This is a serious mistake by a rootsetter and the IFSC should address it.
Quite interesting that noticeable difference in boulder and lead skills are often, if not always, spotlighted only when bouldering is weaker.
Like there are awesome, fun to watch well-known boulder specialists that can barely make it to half of the lead wall and not get any attention on for it - both good or bad. People don’t get hung up on who got to where or if they struggled hard. On the other side, when it’s a lead specialist struggling in boulder, people feel the frustration and disappointment.
Extremely curious what causes that difference in people’s reception of it.
Appreciate your conflicting thoughts on Ai Mori. Very well put.
Very mature take on Ai Mori and Jennifer Buckley. I was amazed to see Jennifer perform in Boulder but understanding that we could only take her performance with realization that there wasn’t much separation is a very real and mature take. Cheers to you
Thank you! You don't get many viewers (yet) it seems, but I like this format, length, and love the graphs.
As a competitor (very low level) and as viewer, I always hate it when climbers cannot get into starting position or worse leave the ground on a bolder problem. As for Ai Mori, she has an obvious weakness, that is for sure. I don't know if setters should adjust things for her (and other competitors) it is indeed a conundrum. Some commentators seem to know exactly what Ai needs to do, I don't. What I do not know either is how committed she is to be a competition boulderer, I would not be surprised if she is only doing boulder comps because of Olympic format past and present.
I think Ai's (rare) presence on the WC circuit is a blessing because she seems to be the only one to really challenge Janja consistently in lead. It encourages setters to set harder lead routes because if you have Ai Mori and Janja climbing, you probably want to avoid to resort to the very anti climatic countback system, and try to separate them before the top.
I wish Janja also had a consistent challenger(s) on bouldering rounds. I feel like she is only "challenged" scoring wise when the boulders are relatively easy and see many tops. :(
For the Olympic games the combined format is still a painful compromise, it can really swing a lot depending on the setting.
If most climbers get a close results (high or low) during the boulder rounds it favors the lead climbers.
If you have an easy route with several top or a stopper move or a low percentage move it favors the boulderers.
Setters job is hard enough to not have to think about all this scoring balance issues. In a way I really hope we get rid of it after this olympic cycle, but I like the idea that it promotes more well rounded climbers .... conflicting thoughts ...
"what do we think of Annie Sanders as a boulderer" well I think great things. She was top 10 overall in 2023, finals in Seoul and Salt Lake, beating the likes of Oceania, Miho, Stasa, Futaba... She looked even better in 2024.
I think it's not very accurate these days to present her as a lead specialist, she looks very complete as Brooke is for instance. Of course she's still young, as is Jennifer Buckley, and we will see how they perform in the next few years. The field is so stacked anyways, I'm expecting great things from Melody Sekikawa, Naïlé Meignan, and even Lily Abriat further down the line when she gets on the senior circuit.
wait- were you at the sign up tent this weekend in Mississauga for the boulder comp?! hahaha
Yep! Comp climbing for breakfast lunch and dinner :)
@@PlasticWeekly haha it was great to meet you! Thanks for all of your help with registration! :)
Janja slayed all the four problems in the final. Absolute beast of a comp climber. Also I'm amazed by the steepness of Janja's graph you showed at 10:32. That's ridiculous :0
On Ai Mori, I think the first problem could have been adjusted. If all the holds were a bit lower without changing any of the hold placement, then that would had been a good problem. That being said, I think the whole fair/unfair discussion in regards to height difference is ultimately meaningless, since there is no guarantee that the shortest climbers would be able to make the final. The route setters couldn't have guessed the outcome. It is what it is and the reality is that there are some problems you can't physically do. You just gotta move on.
If you go much lower then Oce MacKenzie is able to reach the right hand starting crimp from the ground, and the whole point of the start position was supposed to be a dynamic move to that crimp. A much-taller-than-Ai-Mori Fanny Gibert struggled with it too, and an only-SLIGHTLY-taller-than-Ai-Mori Mao Nakamura seemed to have no problems. Like you said - some problems are just not gonna work for all shapes. Sometimes we squeeze a tall person into a nearly impossible box and sometimes we ask a short person to jump their max and sometimes those choices don't work out.
I like what you have to say a lot! Just found your channel. Any way without running into copyright stuff you run the clips of what you’re talking about? Just for us who didn’t tune in?
Missed semis at the time, but Tyler is really selling me on it, might watch the VOD afterall 😄
I think for Ai, as hard as W1 was to watch, W4 was more telling of route setting not being sympathetic for her height. It's hard to know that 1-2 inches makes the difference for a jumpstart without seeing the athletes out there, but that last move with an intended toe hook that far away was crazy to expect pulled off in 4 minutes. Maybe she just needs to be stronger on dynamic explosive moves, but I don't really see any other climbers being called out for stylistic shortcomings (to the same degree) because they're featured at such a lesser frequency (ie. when was the last time they were given multiple sit starts on a comp?)
I agree in the setting - get them on the wall and see them climb. A weird or biased establishing stance is horrific to watch.
Everyone can see Janja is the best, Ai is good at lead but overall she's not at the same level.
Boulder setting shouldn't care about your feelings, that being said why wasn't the starting Boulder 4 meters high? Because it is my made by humans for human, therefore it should be made doable for different kinds of humans. Jumping from Boulder 1 to Boulder 2 is a bouldering skill, Jumping off soft ground is not.
well said
AS IF the route setters dont have any other means to test Ai Mori's bouldering skills! There are plenty of ways to make a separation, an initial super high jump proved to be a bad choice, we have already seen that at least once. Also, I wonder if other smaller athletes were present like Laura Rogora e.g., would they have made the jump? There is a limit at some point where not ever queen Janja could make a jump, not even Tomoa Narasaki, and it's silly to keep repeating that height doesn't make a difference. There is a stop point somewhere.
Also, from someone who was so insistent after Bern that the countback rule was dumb and that it was stupid to see Ai beat Janja because of it, you are awfully quiet about it this time, ESPECIALLY since Ai looked so much better on that final route than Janja, except on the jump obviously.
Ai Mori looked better on both the semi-final and the final lead routes than Janja. Bit sad that it was won on a count back after both topped the final route. Would have been nice if the final route was a tad harder to shake one of them off.
Indeed that count back is a pity. And certainly because we can not see the qualifiers. I’d rather see them do a maxhang challenge to decide the winner if they both top the final. That would be fun but not really showing the better climber.
Definitely a bit anti climactic, but I still think countback is the best way to decide a winner. That way, the climber who did overall better in the competition wins which is fair to me
@@iris5789 not really. It’s like taking the time from a qualifier sprintrace on the 100 meter sprint as a desiscion to get the winner. It doesn’t mean you give you’re all in the qualifiers, you’re aim is to get through the round.
@karlderdelinckx no, because climb8ng is not a speed competition, both athletes topped so they did equally well. Climbing is not about being fast and it shouldn't be. As long as you're within the time limits, it shouldn't be a speed competition.
@@iris5789I think you missed the point I made. It has nothing to do with speed. It’s about not giving you’re full potential when you’re climbing a qualifier.
If they’re going to put a tall move in their that Ai needs to figure out differently for her size and shape let’s see a tiny box starting position or somewhere mid route as see janja go out of her comfort zone and have to figure out how to fit and maintain tension outside of what other competitors may need to do.
They’re climbers not basketball or volleyball players. Jump height off of a soft mat shouldn’t be the challenge. It was bad setting.
Not every boulder problem is fit for everyone and that's the nature of the game.
I didn't feel bad, I felt embarassed for her. She's 2cm shorter than Brooke, 2cm taller than Laura Rogora. 1cm Taller than Jain Kim. This is an Ai Mori issue, not a height issue. She's a professional boulderer, she needs to learn how to jump. She's had a year since her 2023 fiasco to literally train one basic skill and she chose not to. Embarassing. Appreciate the POV from a routesetter though, hard to watch either way.
What are you saying? I feel embarrassed how you think you have your numbers right.
Brooke is 1.58m
Futaba is 1.62m
Laura Rogora while shes shorter than Ai did not compete in the Innsbruck semis boulder
She's definitely gotten better on the dyamism side of things, so saying that she's literally had to train one basic skill to train is a bit unfair. If you compare her dynamic ability from a year or two ago, she'd very likely not make the jump to the green holds in the middle of the Lead finals route. On the flip side she could be well-rounded and not have a shot at making Janja sweat at the top of the lead route. And frankly, I'm glad she made that choice, coz we actually had a real competition to watch in the Women's category in a long while. Still sucks to see her struggle though.
@@dawnelee3234 I'd be shocked if doing box jumps and muscle memory drills and squats once a month since last year's horror show would hurt Ai's lead ability. That's kind of a silly comparison. She can still focus on being a lead specialist while also not ignoring her glaring weakness that last year's Innsbruck's disaster made clear.
@@nickdefrancishow do you know she isn’t doing? She had shown a fairly obvious progression in her dynamic abilities over the course of her senior career, so you think she just isn’t trying?
@@isabelnecessary5915 your statement was that she shouldn’t now you’re saying she should and does. Whatever she did or didn’t do wasn’t nearly enough to overcome her absolute embarrassment on the 2023 boulder to this year. Last year I felt sorry for her, this year I’m embarrassed for her.