On Ekaterinbourg

ON EKATERINBOURG - Patxi Usobiaga, Zurich, 6th of July, 2006 (translated by Ignacio Sandoval Burón and Petri Kemppainen)

The truth is that words are not enough to describe this competition but the closest I can come up with is: "scandal". You will ask yourselves why, now I will explain to you how the subject goes.   

Ekaterinbourg is a Russian city quite far from everywhere, two and a half hours hours flight east from Moscow. It has been hosting some World Cup competitions for several years, the latest taking place in 2003 in a permanent climbing wall, that may well have been squalid, but the competitions worked.   

The first surprise was that they had constructed a new wall for this occasion, which gave us hopes to compete in a worthy wall for a European Championship.                               

Thursday, 29th of June, we went to the isolation zone, which was quite bad, a small bottle of sparkling water and an apple... chairs for 20% of the people, and the warming-up wall (the most important thing) comrised of three vertical panels with very few holds on it... Well, this didn't give any further hopes of the competition wall being competent...  and, surprise! The wall was formed by four vertical walls, two for speed and the other two, assumed for difficulty... and in addition they were out of the ICC regulation. They did not overhang the minimum of 5 metres. (8a comment: in the 2006 regulations overhang is not specified).

The result was that as all the climbers returned to the isolation room they were without any desire to compete and instead a desire to return home thinking let the Russians compete their way.

As you know the bouldering comp was cancelled. Now, my question is,  how is that this can happen in the 2006?  Does not  ICC have an organizational seat to present guidelines on how to organize such an event?  Does not ICC have a group responsible for controlling all these subjects?  How can ICC decide to carry out a European Championship without a wall in order?   

Ladies and gentlemen, something does not work here, and I am sure that the climbing competition arena as such will fade if something is not done.  As for my self, I see a great future for this sport. However, this can only be possible if events such as the one in Russia are avoided in the future. All we are eager of seeing climbing becoming an Olympic sport, but I, as a competitor, prefer to keep it as it is for now, so we don't risk this kind of frauds in an Olympic sport.