Combined Leadspead?

With the new Combined Lead format, with no countback to previous rounds, it is about to climb as fast as possible as all ties both in the qualification and the final are separated by time only. Back in the old days, climbers were hanging around in up to 12 minutes which can be compared with Yuval Shelma doing the 36 holds final route in Moscow in just 2.20 minutes. Some years ago, both climbers and followers were complaining when first the super final was taken away and later when the max time was reduced from 8 to 6 minutes.

I have always been in favour of getting also the Speed element into Lead and it is natural when we have made it into the Olympics. However, I do think the athletes will need to know what the plan is for Tokyo. If it will continue like Leadspeed in Moscow, I am sure Adam Ondra and others like to know as this will change the way they prepare and approach the routes? The dilemma is of course that even if the routes are done more difficult, the risk of having many ties further down is big and in the end, a Leadspeed approach is the most logical one.

This will make it more fun to watch for the general public but at the same time, this demands that times are presented like in a slalom race next to the climber's name. In fact, in order to fully understand who is climbing faster, split times are needed to be presented along the route. We can not have it like in Moscow that only the guys following the event with personal stopwatches and writing split times on a paper are the only guys fully understanding who is fastest in real-time. Imagine that in reality, two climbers are neck and neck during the last ten holds deciding all three medals in Tokyo but even so, the audience and the commentators do not fully understand this and then have to wait, together with the athletes, some 30 seconds before we know the results.

It should be mentioned that one way of making time less important is to go back to + and - hold scoring. As you know, today two climbers performing differently could get the same score, meaning time is needed to separate them. Another solution could be to skip observation as this means that most climbers will use the same beta, increasing the risk for ties.

It should be mentioned that the Lead route setter in Moscow, Jan Zbranek, told 8a that the reason for why the final routes were too easy was just because they were too tired after 14 days of setting. IFSC has not given them any instructions in terms of making the Combined routes easier. "The guidelines never change: one top is perfect. We don't really get updated instructions for every comp."