Climbing - IFSC Bouldering World Cup
The major attraction at the Cliffhanger has to be the IFSC Bouldering World Cup.
The Sheffield round of the World Cup is the penultimate of 9 events worldwide, the other rounds being in Italy (15th/16th Apr), Solvenia (7th/8th May), Austria (13th/14th May), Canada (27th/28th May), USA (3rd/4th Jun), Netherlands (17th/18th Jun), Spain (25th/26th Jun) and Germany (19th/20th Aug). The IFSC Bouldering World Cup at Cliffhanger will see around 120 of the world's top boulderers battle it out for the £13,000 prize fund.
The competition is spread over 2 days, with the qualification rounds taking part on the Saturday and the semi finals and finals on the Sunday.
Each round is slightly different but the basic rule of ‘most top outs in the least number of attempts' is a constant. One other constant is the use of a bonus hold, although a tie break hold would be a better description. The bonus hold is normally about 2/3rds of the way up each climb (or problem as they are called in bouldering).
So a scorecard in the qualification round might look something like this after each climber has attempted all 5 problems):
Stewart Watson 5/5/5/5 meaning Stew flashed all 5 boulders and obviously in doing so got all 5 Bonuses on the 1st attempt.
5/10/5/5 would mean that all of the bonuses were got on the first attempt but the athlete fell a total of 5 times over the 5 boulders. Note that if the climber does not succeed on a boulder then the number of unsuccessful attempts is not recorded on the score..
4/17/5/10 would mean 4 boulders were ‘topped' in a total of 17 attempts and all of the bonuses were achieved in a total of 10 attempts.
The qualification round will see the field split into 2 groups, each group climbs 5 problems. Each climber has 5 minutes to attempt each problem with as many attempts within the 5 minutes as they require to complete the problem. Each climber then has 5 minutes rest before moving onto the next problem. One key thing in the qualification round is that the 5 minute changeover period runs concurrently for all climbers so when the 5 minutes are up the climber must stop.
The semi finals use exactly the same format as the qualification except that there are only 4 problems to attempt and the rotation time is 5 minutes.
The finals are a bit different though. There are 4 problems to attempt and the rotation time is unique to the climber - the rotation time is 4+ minutes which means that if the climber has left the ground they can continue until they complete the problem or fall off. As Magnus Magnusson would say "I have started so I will finish". The other big difference is that all of the climbers finish their attempts on problem 1 before everyone moves onto problem 2.
Timings:
Saturday 2nd July
Male Qualification will run from 10.30 to 13.30. Female Qualification will run from 14.30 to 17.30.
Sunday 3rd July
10.30 Semi Finals starts
16.45 Presentation of the finalists followed by the finals
18.30 Award Ceremony
More information on bouldering and rock climbing in Sheffield available via The Climbing Works, The Edge & The Foundry
The competition will be located in the main event marquee in the Climbing and Bouldering Zone.
Webcast
The IFSC Bouldering World Cup is to be streamed live on the Internet. See www.ifsc.tv (all rounds of the IFSC World Cup are also webcast here).
What is Bouldering?
"Bouldering is... many things to many people. For some, it's the ultimate expression of climbing. No ropes, no gear - just the joy of pure movement, in relative safety, not too high above the ground. For some, it's a never-ending quest for technical perfection. The hardest moves will nearly always be on boulders. For some, it's the proven method to gain power, suppleness and technique." © Mick Ward 2006
- Price
- FREE
