Coleman & Puccio win USA Bouldering Nationals

Nathaniel Coleman and Alex Puccio have won the USA Bouldering Nationals, being ahead of Kai Lightner (17) and Ashima Shiraishi (15). Alexey Rubtsov and Brooke Raboutou (15) were third. For Alex it was the tenth time she won! Complete results. It is interesting that Coleman was #9 in the semi and having started first in the final he flashed all four problems. Overall, the results shows again that it seems to be an advantage to start first climbing with less pressure and better friction on fresh holds. The scoring system is not the standard IFSC scheme. Instead, the climbers are ranked individually on each problem which is later summed up. However, the first ranking criteria is the number of tops. This means that if you get a really poor result on one boulder this will have a very negative impact. Sean McColl was ranked #116.5 out of 123 competitors on the last boulder which made him just miss the semi even if he had done the first three boulders in just five tries. With IFSC rules, which focus mainly on your best results, he would have made it to the semi. The biggest drawback of the USA scoring format that it is very hard to follow and analyse the results before everyone has competed.