23 February 2017

More arguments for a varied IFSC Speed route

As Combined Climbing will be part of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Speed climbing will also be included in most of national Youth Championships. The dilemma is that 13-year-old girls and boys will be challenged on the same route as professional adults. The current fixed 6b+ is actually much harder to do for a 140 cm tall girl. The last Youth World Championship showed that also the younger girls can climb it quite fast. You needed to do the climb in 12.28 seconds to make it into the final, which is almost doubled time for adult male. However, in the Oceania Championship, the winner climbed the Speed route in 55 seconds. Imagine how many short 13-year-olds will actually not be able to top out or to do it in less than one minute in upcoming nationals. Somebody could argue that there could be Speed routes fixed for different ages, height and levels but this would not be fair as the very best youngsters would need to optimize their training on different routes. The simple solution is to skip the fixed Speed route and instead let it vary for each event, like Lead routes. In practice this means that the Speed route could be any grade from 5a to 7a making everyone focus on Speed instead of trying to redpoint the Olympic Speed route sub 1 minute.
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