China World Championships

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Sean McColl

Day 1+2 (June 28th-29th)

World Championships were quite different this year than they have been in the past. This was the first year that they were held outside of Europe. This year they were held in Qinghai, China. This is more of an adventure than a blog post, why don’t you come along for the ride.

I left Toulouse on June 28th at 15:00 on a flight to Paris, my flight from Paris left at around 20:00 and after a 5 hour layover in Beijing, I had arrived in Qinghai a whole day later at about 21:00. I had been travelling for about 30 hours but I felt pretty good. I was a little skeptical about the travel arrangments from the airport but when I saw that the whole Spanish team was on the same flight, I was relieved. When we got there, they were waiting with a big yellow sign that said 10th Climbing World Championships. After the hour long bus ride, we started checking into our hotel. By 22:30

I had gotton to my room which I was sharing with Daniel Woods who had gotton there the day before. When I walked around the room, it seemed pretty normal, there were 3 individual beds, (one for my father who was coming) a TV, a Balcony and even little plasic sandals to wear about the room. It wasn’t the cleanest room but I was getting the room covered by the Pan American Council. I was pretty happy until I saw the bathroom. I’ve seen some pretty bad bathrooms in my travels but this one definately topped it. This bathroom had no real toilet, just a hole in the floor with two places to squat down on top of it. I’ve used squatting toilets and usually it’s not bad for a day or so but for a whole week! On top of that, the shower was right above the (toilet) and it used the hole for the toilet to drain into. So sometimes when you’re having a shower, the smell of the toilet wafts up… Not cool.

Day 3 (June 30th)

The first day of the competition started at 8am. Where we were staying was about 45 minutes by bus, which we had to make twice a day. I woke up at 6:20 to shower, eat breakfast and catch the bus. The showers were terrible at best… they just drizzled water, the only good thing that it was indeed hot water. On the other hand, the competitions venue was incredible. I didn’t get to look at it fully until after qualifyers but they had a huge boulder wall mounted on a stage so it was easier to see. Just to the left, they had a giant speed wall that could fit 4 standard routes. To finish it off, to the left of that, they a very impressive lead wall with at 20 volumes on it. I got to isolation at 7:45 and looked at the running orders. I forget what time I was supposed to go out but qualifyers went pretty well. It turns out that they had a temporary isolation just for the first day because our qualifyers were on the real isolation wall. I flashed the first 3 problems and I was really psyched. The 4th problem really threw me off; I couldn’t touch the second move. I finished my 5 minutes after trying the first move 7 times. I took a couple deep breaths, took my rest and did the 5th problem second go. In total for qualifyers I had 4 tops in 5 tries. After everyone had gone, I was sitting in 11th. Daniel finished just in front of me with 4 tops in 4 tries in 10th.

Day 4 (July 1st)

The second day of the competition was another rest day for a lot of the competitors. For me, it was not. Since I was registered in the overall ranking, I had to at least compete once in the 10m speed. The one thing that they changed this year is that they made the overall rankings based on the 10m-speed route and not the 15m. As you may or may not know, they know have a stardard speed route. At every world cup, it’ll be the same route with the same hand and foot holds. I had to do a semi warm-up and do the route once. I did the 10m-speed route in 8.5 seconds, which put me in 43rd. Not my best result in Speed climbing but it was my first trying trying the standard route and to succeed in speed, you HAVE to train the route. By the end of the day, the fastest time up the 10m route was 4.22 seconds. At the end of the day, I got the startlist for lead climbing and went back to the hotel.

Day 5 (July 2nd)

This day was dedicated to lead qualifyers. Since it was flash format, they had the routes up since the first day. On the wall, they had all 4 routes up at the same time and they planned to run them all simultaneously. In the men, there were about 85 competitors and for the women, about 65. I was 30th on the first route and 72nd on the second. For the demo, instead of actually climbing the routes, they had recorded the climbers a few days ago and they replayed them all on TV’s. It was a bit strange to watch a forerunner on TV because it wasn’t just beside the wall so you couldn’t look back and forth. Since I wasn’t one of the firsts, it didn’t matter because I’d probably see the route done at least a few times before I had to cilmb. Qualifyers took a huge amount of time. I think I climbed my first route after almost 3 hours of competition and I didn’t climb my second until after 6 hours of waiting. I ended up topping out both my routes but I don’t think I would’ve done my second one if it weren’t flash. Just before my second route, something happened that I was super pissed about. I knew Jorg was just starting to climb, and I knew that I was 3 climbers after him so I was probably going to be climbing in about 20 minutes. I was just getting my stuff ready when I hear over the loud speaker, Sean McColl, last call. When I heard this, I though maybe Jorg slipped and the two people after him had gotton injured or were choosing not to climb so I ran over pretty scared that I was going to miss my turn. When I got there, I saw that Jorg was still climbing and the two after him were just chilling. I turned around and almost lost it on the guy that had done it. He was chuckling and telling someone else that that was the fastest way to get a competitor. I told him in the nicest voice I could muster that it was completely unnaceptable to say last call unless I’m the next person in line and I’m about to miss my turn. I quickly thought about other things and got in the mind set for my second qualifyer.

In my opinion, the flash works really well because climbers aren’t stuck in isolation for 7 hours but there are a lot of other competitors that dislike the format saying that it’s unfair to the competitors that have to climb the routes first. I agree with their point of view but since the startlist is random I still agree with the flash format. This year, all the world cups were given a choice of flash or onsight qualifyers. Next year, they will re-evaluate and force one or the other. Since there was a really awkward move at the top of both routes, there were a lot of strong climbers that fell on one or the other. Along with me, there were about 9 others that topped both routes and there were about 10 that had fallen at the crux move on the top of one of the routes. With 26 going to semis, all the favourites made it through. Another thing that I liked about the routes is that they went straight up. The routes were max 40 moves, which meant they were going to be hard, not long. Since I spend most of the year bouldering, I look forward to walls like this. I know that since there will never be a move on a route thats harder than in bouldering, it’ll just be the endurance that will make me fall. On short routes like this, I sprint where I’m comfortable and I should be able to do pretty well.

Day 6 (July 3rd)

This day was the ‘rest’ day in the program. I think it’s the first World Championships where they dedicated a whole day to rest but for someone like me who made semis in both categories, this rest day was much needed. By now in the competition, I was already so happy. Two years ago at World Championships in Aviles, I didn’t make semis in either. I came really close in bouldering and just blew the sequence on the last boulder. It turned out that the stupid tries I spent on the last boulder cost me semi finals. In lead, I slipped off in the roof on my first qualifyer and topped my second route. My position on the first route was so bad that I ended up in the 40’s. I think that the only thing that happened on this day was the qualification for the 15m speed climbing for men or something like that. Since I didn’t have to go to the competition, I went to a local shopping centre to look around. Also, this was the day I started to get a bit sick.

Since the beginning of the competition, there had been numerous people that had been getting sick. Many people thought that it was the food and others thought it was the water. All the athletes were staying at the same hotel. It was in fact a National Olympic Training Base. All the athletes got meal tickets for the same restaurant in the base. We were supposed to eat there in the morning, they would bring food for us in the day, and we were supposed to eat dinner there at night. I think it might have been how there were preparing because health standards in China I’m sure are different that in other parts of the world. By the end of the competition there were 70 athletes out of 200 that had fallen sick. To me, this is very unnaceptable. You can’t offer occomodation at a hotel where they’re making almost half of their athletes sick. After this day, we started eating rarely at the restaurant, only going there in the morning for coffee. Some people in the IFSC started getting mad about the competitors complaining but I think that everyone should know. Alex Johnson from the American team posted a picture of our bathroom on our facebook. It just showed that the shower was just above the toilet, which was just a hole. Within a day, someone from the IFSC had contacted USA Climbing who contacted Alex’s mom who took the picture down. They said something along the lines of being a discrace to the federation in China. I think thats just BS and now we are determined to tell everyone. If everyone got sick in the hotel, people deserve to know. If the bathroom is disguesting and shitty, then people should know that too. Yes, on the other hand, the competiton venue is amazing but you can’t just show the best parts of the comp and ignore the failures. Thats like have an Open House and only showing 3 of the 7 rooms because the other 4 are broken and dirty. That aside, it was time to get psyched for semi finals in bouldering tommorrow.

I’ve decided to cut this blog post into two different parts because it’s already ridiculously long and there’s another 2000 words already written. I’ll have part 2 of the post up shortly!

5 countries in a week!

Posted on June 22, 2009 by Sean McColl

During the past week, I’ve travelled to 5 countries. The day after finals in Vienna, I broke the underside of my exhaust system. The second picture is what I drove over to break it… it’s maybe 3 inches high so I was pretty upset. As you can see below, I wasnt sure if they could just weld it back together or if they’d have to buy a new one. I left my car at the gym and went back to Innsbruck.

A full week later, the day before I was supposed to drive up to Eindhoven, we finally got the car to a garage and they fixed it. To get my car, I woke up at 5 in the morning, took the 5 hour train ride into Vienna, picked up my car from the garage and then drove 5 hours back to Innsbruck. On June 11th, we drove up to Eindhoven. The drive was supposed to take 8 hours but after 3 hours, we stopped at a huge stoppage in traffic. The highway wasnt even moving. We took the exit and took a little detour. That was when I notice my engine light had come on. This light isn’t the ”check engine” light that everyone ignores. This was the yellow light that means there’s something very wrong with your engine. I stopped and checked under the hood. Everything was ok that I knew how to fix, oil being the most important. I had two choices, I could wait a whole day, miss the world cup and fix my car, or I could keep driving slowly and hope for the best. I chose the latter. I had the same problem last year and the problem only happened when I stopped the car. The RPM would fall below 1000 and the car would stall itself. Anyways, 7 hours later we arrived in Eindhoven.

The World Cup was a little bit different that ones I had done before. I climbed terribly and I didnt even make finals. My ultimate downfall was just the first problem, it was super easy but somehow it took me 3 tries to stick the dyno. I just wasn’t on my game. Turns out that if I had only taken 2 tries to do the first problem, I’d have made semis.

Problem 2 also turned out to be one of my worst weaknesses which probably added to my bad performance.

Problem 5 was pretty cool though, kind of campusing up a cool little volume to a sort of mantle for the last move. I really like how creative they are during World Cups. It inspires me to set a lot better when I return home.

Oh well, you cant do well at every competition… Semi finals and finals were super fun to watch and eventually Akiyo Noguchi and Kilian Fischhuber won the World Cup and the overall rankings as well.

After Eindhoven, we made our way to Amsterdam. It was my first time in Amsterdam and I thought it was quite a unique experience. First of all, Marijuana isn’t legal in Amsterdam, it’s just tolerated… If you have less than 10 grams on your person, the police won’t blink an eye. Also a ”coffee shop” in Amsterdam means a shop where you can buy all kinds of pot. Also, in the red light district, there is literally dozens of women just standing behind glass doors, waiting for someone to pick them up. Again, prostitution isn’t legal, it’s just tolerated. The weird thing is that the girls are usually quite young and even attractive. There’s of course the parts of the district that are for more adventurous types of people but for most part, they looked like pretty normal women.

Next on our list was Paris and Fontainebleau. We drove straight to Fontainebleau after Amsterdam and spent the day getting some groceries, and finding the gite. A friend of mine from Magic Wood gave me the address of a place he stayed while he was in Font. It is run by a guy named Neil. He’s English so don’t worry about not speaking French. At his house, he has 4 different ”gites”. They range from 2 to 4 people but it’s pretty much like an apartment. For the small gite, you can rent by day, and for the larger ones, you rent them by week. A 4 person gite for a week during the low season is only 250€ which comes out to 9€ a person/day. Thats pretty good considering you get a bed, showers, stove, fridge, everything! It’s super mellow there, and if anyone is in Font and looking for a place to stay, I highly recomment this place. The website is MaisonBleau.

Our first day in Font, we climbed in Franchard secter. Neil lent us a little guidebook with the 4 star problems. It was super hot that day, and I mostly just flailed on some of the harder problems. When it’s hot in Font, it’s ridiculous for climbing, I was struggling on V7′s and 8′s. Our second day in Font, we decided to drive up to Paris. Mathilde is from France and she had never been. We parked in a garage, spend a couple of hours in the Louvre then made our way close to the Arc de Triomphe and then the Eiffel Tower.

Our third day in Font, we returned to the Franchard secter although we went straight to the boulder ”Karma”. I had found it on the last day we came climbing but it was the end of the day and too hot to try it. It was the only boulder above V9 that I could find so I figured I’d try it. I warmed up in the surrounding problems and went to work. When I was 14, at my second Junior World Championships, I had come to Font with my dad and I remember working this problem with Peter Woods. Back then, I was no where strong enough to do the problem and couldn’t even do the first move. This time, it took me about 30 minutes per move. The problem is only about 3 moves but it feels like your hugging your way up the problem. You deadpoint with your right hand to a big sloper with a little indent for your fingers.

For the second move, you have to put in a high hand foot match hell hook and rock really hard on your foot. When you can get the second hold which a super bad sloper, you have to try to take out your right foot which should be still on the starting foot.

All in all, the problem took me about 1.5 hours. The hard part that it was really hot again, around 20 degrees the whole day. After I did the problem, my leg hurt from the moves so we called it a day.

It was only about 3pm when we finished climbing so we decided to drive back to Toulouse. The drive took about 6.5 hours which was relatively easy. We got to Toulouse on the 19th and I’ve been here ever since. In a few days I’ll be driving to Millau for the Petzl RocTrip and then it’s off to World Championships in China!

2nd place finish!

Posted on June 2, 2009 by Sean McColl

As you may have known, there was a world cup in Vienna on May 29th and 30th. There was 81 competitors for the men and and 51 for the women. This was my second world cup of 2009.

We drove to Vienna from Innsbruck on Thursday. The drive took about 5 and a half hours because there was some construction. My GPS took us straight to our hotel which was just across the street from the competition.

Friday morning was the qualification for the women. Because it was supposed to rain all day on Friday, they arranged qualifyers to be held in the climbing gym rather than on the competition wall they had build outside. We watched the women for a couple of hours and scoped out the climbing gym. It was pretty cool, lots of interesting features and of course a couple of slab climbs for the first qualifyer.

Mens qualification was just after the women and thankfully we didnt have to be in isolation until after their round wad done. Since there was over 80 competitors registered, they decided to split the field in half and put them on two different sets of problems. The way they seperate the field is not random, they take the climbers world ranking and split them evenly, then they randomize all the competitors that have no world ranking. So if every competitor was present the person who was ranked 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, ect would be on problem set number one and the people that were ranked 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, ect would be on problem set number two. Since 20 people make semi finals, they take top 10 competitors in each group. In semi finals, everyone climbs the same problems. The reason they make two group is because if there were 81 competitors taking 5 minutes each boulder, the last climber would have to wait in isolation for 405 minutes….

Qualification

I was seeded 26th in the B group. I did my regular warm up, the area was pretty big so it wasnt that hard to get around other climbers. When it was finally my turn I was pretty nervous just like always. My first problem was a slab problem. I dont have a picture of it, but it was pretty basic just really awkward. It turns out that the slab problems were one of the hardest in qualification. On the hard move of the problem, i managed to get my knee onto the big feature and flash the problem. The second problem went around a giant egg feature.

I flashed up to the last move and had a ridiculous time getting to the final hold. It was so weird, there was a really good foot and you were shooting for a pocket so you couldnt just aim randomly. I fell on the last move once and send the boulder next try. I was kind of annoyed that I had fallen once but I sucked it up and concentrated on the next boulder. The 3rd problem was a slight slab onto an overhang. I fell on the second move 3 times before finally sticking the zone hold. From there, I lunged out left to a crimp and had to hand foot match to lock off to the final hold. The reason you had to lock off to the last hold was because it was another pocket but this time they had screwed in a tiny gib on the inside of the pocket so you couldnt lunge towards it. Its a good thing I went slowly to the hold because if you had to throw for it, it was nex tot impossible to get your fingers in the right place.

3 down, 2 to go. The 4th problem in qualification was in a corner. I dry fired off the first hold and scraped up the back up my hand pretty badly. On my second try, my fingers were bleeding pretty good. I couldnt figure out a move in the middle and I didnt do the problem. The last problem looked pretty hard. Just big moves between decent holds and a kind of a jump at the end. I did the problem 3rd try after falling twice on the second move. My final score after qualification was 4 tops in 10 tries and 5 bonus in 11 tries. I finished in 3rd position in my group so 6th overall.

Semis

Semi finals were on Saturday morning. I went into isolation at 10am just to have a big meeting with all the other team coaches to discuss what to do about the rain. It was pouring outside and the competition was supposed to be on the outdoor wall. The postponed semi until 12:15 when they would make their decision. We came back around 12 and it was still raining. Since the rain was going straight down with no wind, we all decided to go forth with semi finals. The crowd would get wet but the climbers wouldnt. If the rain shifted directions with some winds half way through the round, they would have to cancel the round and everyone would advance to finals. Luckily, after the first few people went out, the skies cleared and the sun came out.

I went out 16th and the comp wall looked amazing. The first problem was absolutely ridiculous.

I flashed to the bonus hold which was the second big triangle feature but I was absolutely stuck. I couldnt match, or go to the next hold. I shot my feet out left and tried to do anything but failed. The next couple of tries resulted in similar or worse efforts. The second boulder looked a bit scary. A little slab wall, then a jump around the lip to a big feature.

I fell on the jump move 5 times before finally sticking the jump with about 12 seconds left. I campused the next move, looked over at the clock and it read 10 seconds. I quickly campused the last move and matched with seconds remainly in my time. The 3rd problem was all features. It started with a jump, then you groped the feature for a couple of moves before making your way to the next one.

Then you had to get your foot up on the first feature and make a really big move to the finish. It took me about 20 seconds to do the last move, but evetually I lunged for it, flashing the problem. I was pretty sure you had to do the last problem to be in finals so I was scared and psyched at the same time. Just from being out there, I knew that a lot of people had already done the last problem. I came out confident and flashed it. It was a problem that suited me.

It started with a dyno, then a huge move to a crimp, you matched that, jumped to the hold up and left, then you just had to hand foot match and lock off to the so’ill double hand hold. I finished semis with 3 tops in 8 tries and 4 bonus in 4 tries. I qualified for finals in 4th place out of 6.

Finals

Finals started at 7:30. This is only my 3rd time in finals. It starts with a presentation of the climbers followed by a 2 minute preview on each problem. After the preview, we stay just behind the wall and come out one at time for each boulder. Since we go each boulder one by one, you usually have at least 20 minute rest in between each boulder. The first one was by far the easiest. The hardest move was probably snatching the second hold because the feet were pretty high. Then you just went up the arrete, jumped to a big red feature and campused to the finishing pocket.

I flashed the problem and all 6 finalist did the problem. The second problem was considerably harder. From how long the first two competitors took, I knew both of them hadnt done it. I dont know if I was more motivated to do the problem because I knew it hadnt been done or just really psyched but I did the problem second try. My first try, I slipped off the second move because I didnt move my foot to the start hold. On my second try, I put my foot in the right place and fired the problem.

It was the second move that was giving everyone a hard time and once I did that move, the rest of the moves werent as hard. Only one other person in finals competed the problem after me. The third problem was another slab. The first move was a really awkward move straight up and you just had to stand there while hold a hold out left with your left hand. Then you had to shuffle your feet along the start hold and step over to another foothold. From there, you slowly made your way out left, then did a big lock off and threw for the top.

On my second try, I got all the way up to the final move only to fall trying to catch the last hold. I got to the last move a couple of tries after but my left arm was just too pumped to finish the problem. Out of all 6 finalist, I was the only competitor not to do problem number 3. The fourth and last problem was also all features. It looked like a giant compression problem so I was pretty confident. I know Im good at heelhooks so I thought that I had a pretty good shot of doing the problem. Also, by the time I had to go out, I knew the first two climbers had done the problem on at least their second try.

I got on and the first move was really hard, probably the hardest on the problem. I kept my heelhooks high on the features for the whole problem and finally deadpointed to the last feature. From there, all you had to do is shuffle a bit to the right and jump for the last hold. I blew on the final feature to get rid of the chalk and sent the problem! It turns out that I had to flash the last problem to come second place. If I had done the last problem on my second try, I wouldve come 3rd and if I had done it on my 3rd try, I wouldve come 4th. Rustam Gelmanov won the competition by being the only climber in finals to do all the boulders. 3rd place went to Kilian Fischhuber. Full results can be found on the IFSC Website.

For the women, Aleksandra Balakireva won with Akiyo Noguchi in 2nd and Anna Stohr in 3rd.

All the pictures in this post were taken by my girlfriend Mathilde Becerra.

Sean McColl

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