Well, I just got done with competing in the Belgian adult "difficulty" nationls. The reason why difficults is in quotation makrs will be explained soon.
The comp started off with two flash qualifiers. The first route was maybe 7b+, cool face climbing, while the second was maybe 7c+, also up a face. They weren't too hard so naturally, there was a 7 way tie for first going into finals.
The finals route turned out to be so easy that five of us topped it with ease. Since there was now a five-way tie for first, the rulebook stated that we had to go again on the sae finals route and the fastest one to climb it would win.
At this point I was so pissed off that I didnt even care anymore. I didnt try at all to be fast and still ended up getting third.
So first off, why did the routesetters set a 7c finals route? There were at least four competitors there (me, Nicolas favress, my friend Jerome, and Olivier - Nicos brother) who have onsighted 8a+ and 8b routes. I understand that they wanted the othe rcompetitors to get high as well, but they could have at least made the last section of the route really hard.
And the second thing,why couldnt they just set uo a regular superfinal like every other comp in the world? Since when doe sspeed decide who wins the difficulty nationals? It pisses me off because I have been training really hard lately and definately felt that I could have won this comp if I climbed well. Now speed, NOT strength, decided who won.
Im pretty sure the rulebook needs to be re-written for cases like this. Also, Belgian routesetters need to do a better job in assessing the strength of the competitors and setting an appropriate finals route.
Nicolas Favresse ended up being the fastest with his time being 1 minute and 56 seconds. So he climbed the finals route at an adult nationals (around 70 feet long and 8 quickdraws) in under two minutes. Great finals route....
But whatever, tomorrow I'm off to Font then after that Spain. I dont have to deal with it anymore. And also, I finally met Nico again and Im planning on going climbing with him this summer at a bunch of new crags hes developing in Arco.
