Adidas ROCKSTARS

Written by Sean McColl on September 18, 2013. Posted in Climbing, Competitions

The Adidas ROCKSTARS has concluded its 3rd installment in equal number of years and the competition get better every year!

To see a nice video, check out the following LINK!

Qualifications were on the 13th with semi-finals and finals on the 14th. To cut qualifications pretty short I’ll just resume what I did. I know last year I was really tired after the 3 rounds so I decided to cut my warm up a little short hoping to warm up a bit on the problems.

It turned out that the qualification boulders were quite hard and I almost didn’t advance to semi-finals. I can’t really tell if this is a great plan or not because the day you don’t make semi-finals, you feel dumb for not warming up 100%… I qualified 18th heading into semi-finals.

The bonus was that I’d be out in the first few climbers which meant nice fresh holds. I also knew that the heat from the lights could play a factor if there were lots of slopers.

Next day rolled around and semi-finals went really well for me. After taking a few tries to figure out the first body position on the first boulder, I topped it. The second boulder was a blind dyno to a hold that was slightly blocked by another hold. It took a few tries to spot the hold, then another few tries to try and miss the hold blocking it but as the time wound down my fingers stuck the right part of the hold and I had 20 seconds to top the boulder.

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The top wasn’t easy but at the same time wasn’t very hard and I had topped my second boulder.

The third boulder went very well, the best of the round you could say. I didn’t really know the sequence as you could do a bunch of bumps, you could cross to start, or maybe it was a feet first boulder. I committed on the feet first and it pulled through. I was soon on the last few moves on the volumes. It was hard to flip my grip on the right hold but as soon as I had it locked in I was confident I’d top the boulder. The arête was good enough to pull up and see the final hold. I got up to it, matched and felt like my round was going very well. I turned around and smiled at the cheering crowd. I love these moments in climbing and I try to take it all in when they happen!

Sadly the final boulder shut me down so I was left with 3 tops. I watched the rest of the round because I thought I’d be close to not making finals. As I suspected, the heat started to creep in and the holds got a bit worse. In the end, if you topped 1 boulder in fewer than 5 tries it was enough to make finals. I qualified 3rd in the round and was very relieved/happy to be in finals once more.

The final round was interesting enough. The first boulder 5 of the Men flashed. The second boulder, no one made zone… Ooops. After the first 2 boulder, they eliminate 3. Because of the tie they were stuck between taking 5 to the 3rd boulder, or counting back to semi-finals. Last year, this happened and they took 5 to the third boulder. It didn’t work because they were tied again and then they went to the semi-final results. This year they decided to count semi-finals results right away so I was on the podium with Jernej Kruder and Rustam Gelmanov.

I was first out on the first boulder and I managed to flash it! It was hard enough that I knew one of the other two could fall. I waved at the crowd with eager anticipation because I knew I had set the bar high.

They came out one at a time knowing they had to flash the boulder. They didn’t crumble and both topped the boulder first try. I was a bit sad to be knocked out after my flash but can’t be upset about it. I went back to congratulate them and the judge said we were going to ANOTHER tie break boulder. I was pretty confused right away, thinking they’d use semi-final results. The competition organizer didn’t want ties so he told the route setters to create a tie-break boulder similar to 2012. We’d go out and try it one try a time until the tie was broken.

A roller coaster of a ride for me to say the least. Thinking I was out, then this chance to go back in. The tie-break boulder was set hard, and weird… I was already confused by the starting position and eventually got 3 tries on the boulders. Of those 3 tries, I just couldn’t set up very well. I didn’t do much pulling on the holds, but a lot of pushing. Eventually I couldn’t get zone and the other two did. I was kicked out, but it didn’t phase me much. I knew it was already a second breath for me and I was still happy just to be on the podium at this event!

The Super final boulder went perfect for the men with Kruder flashing it while Rustam fell. For the women, Jule managed to top the boulder mere seconds before Shauna taking the title. Another Rockstars is finished and I obtained another podium! It was a great event and I hope I’ll be able to attend it next year as well.

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