20 August 2005

Graham downgrades

Article 2005-01-20

Dave Graham
has opened The story of two worlds something that he describes as the new standard for 8C. Here's a part of what Dave has to say about the problem and grading.

"I changed some of the grades on my scorecard, because I thought they were incorrect. They weren?t consistent with my present views of how hard certain things seem. Didn?t make much sense to me. They were heavily influenced by what other climbers thought. I have posted what things feel like for me. Its my personal comparative analysis. My abstraction.

So, those new grades are just my grades, not the real grades, not the world grades. I don?t want to offend anyone. I just want to climb REALLY hard. Maybe 8C finally. Real 8C.

"The boulder is a pure sit start to a chunk of rock Toni Lamprecht climbed and called The Dagger. I have done the whole line now, after 6 days of trying and 3 years of fucking around with trying to get an idea how to get on, can compute as an intense, super technical-PAINFUL- Monster of a problem. It starts with 7-Big moves at 8B or 8B+(it's harder than The Dagger for me, and then directly into the incredibly physical 8B+.

I think this is the hardest bloc yet, and I think it can change the mal-progression we can see when we are seeing millions of 8B+ and 8C blocs climbed everywhere. Now its just about comparison. The big point is REVOLUTION, hell with the media, hell with 8a.nu (don't take that personally, it's a symbol of the people who abuse the concept from the page), hell with climbing big numbers to keep yourself sponsored, now, it's time to climb the REAL numbers, and really progress our sport. The Story of Two Worlds, proves that point."

We at 8a.nu believe Dave's right. It's about time we, the media, and we, the climbers, start to focus on honesty rather than ego-inflating that leave a bad after taste...
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