The trade show comp has the same terrain for both male and female which is better. I would agree that a variety of more technical problems might change the outcome of finals for both male and female. However, for the sport to grow, showy, more powerful moves is the direction of the sport to attract a main stream audience.
For competitions, I would rather be strong than smooth, the way they are set these days. Look at the male or female climbers and tell me who looks the smoothest and most polished, its not the winners of the comp for sure. Strength trumps all, it is just the way it is, and the Alex’s and Daniel are the best in competition.

“6. Have you ever climbed with a “professional” climber?”

Kauk, Bachar, Cosgrove, Leavitt, Croft, Schultz, Lynn Hill, Hans Florine, Jason Campbell, Andrada, Toni Arbones, Edlinger, Legrand, Tribout, Raboutou, Glowacz, both LeMenestrels, Cortijo, Ghesquiers, JC Lafaille, Hirayama, Destivelle, Mariacher, Iovane, Moffat, Kurt Albert, …met Sir Edmund Hillary…

do AMGA guides count as professional climbers? Could throw a dozen or so of those out there as well…

Ha ha! Might as well delete the first sentence. However, what follows is important, the idea of accurate portrayal or “translating” climbing to a broader audience is important and generally, competition formats don’t take this into account. I’ll add more in the other thread. Just a few notes specific to this discussion:

1) If you can’t differentiate a campus move from a deadpoint then you have no business arguing the difference between technique and strength. Notably, Dan Hague, one of the authors of “The Self Coached Climber” argues that this is a false dichtomoy, that climbing is a movement based sport that emphasizes balance, movement initiation, and timing. If you understand climbing this way, even “brutish” moves have some level of sublime technique.
2) Adam Ondra has lost competitions. It’s true. If that’s the case and, if you’re right and he’s the best climber, then he’s only ever lost when the routesetters did a bad job and created routes that didn’t align with his gifts, right? In other words, Adam has certain talents and Daniel has certain talents. No competition will adequately address all of these talents or tease them out in a compelling, quantitative way to definitively say that one is necessarily better than the other.
3) A boulder route competition might be cool, but it won’t solve your issues here. Which earns more points? What order do you do it in?

Here it is:

jghedge,

I do not know you and thus will not judge you unfairly. However, you apparently have NO idea what you are talking about when it comes to the sport of climbing. You are obviously speaking from very little personal experience with the sport, the industry, the comps, and honestly the whole picture. In fact, I’m not really sure why anyone has answered you with more than “WOW, that guy is just plain crazy!” But just out of interest, I’d like to get some answers from you to a few questions that might clear things up:

1. Have you been (not just seen some footage) to a major US bouldering comp in the last 3 years? If so, which one/s?

2. Have you competed in a major US bouldering comp in the last 5 years? If so, which one/s?

3. Have you ever climbed with Adam Ondra?

4. Have you ever climbed with Chris Sharma?

5. Have you ever climbed with Daniel Woods?

6. Have you ever climbed with a “professional” climber?

7. Are you basing any of your “theories” off actual statistics (yes, they exist) or are they simply unsupported hypothesis?

And if you answer these questions how I know you probably will, the only conclusion that I’ve come to is this:

The comps are not the problem. The climbers are not the problem. It’s our ability to accurately portray the happenings of the climbing world to an increasingly large, and increasingly secluded side of the industry that is the problem. As the sport grows, this is the side that needs to be constantly updated with accurate, informative, and stimulating media. The disconnected need to become connected.

So, jghedge, If you knew, then you would know, and there would be no debate. But you don’t know, and therein lies our problem.

I feel that you actually make some interesting points in the last post, and I wish you had framed your argument the same way as your have in the last post from the very beginning.

My main response to your argument above is twofold:

A. the dynamic, showy style of problem that is often set in American bouldering competitions, all the way from the most local of ABS comps to the Nationals, isn’t as straightforward as it may seem (when put up by skilled routesetters), doesn’t completely ensure that the climber with the most brute strength (and, theoretically, lacking any technique) will win on a given day, and is, in fact fun to watch. I personally love it. I could be in the minority but having spoken with a few friends about the above, I don’t believe this to be true.

However, I feel that we’ve already argued Point A ad nauseam, and that we will have to agree to disagree.

So on to point B: Would I concede that you’re correct in that American Bouldering Competitions fail, to some degree, to attract a mainstream, non-climber audience? To an extent. But I don’t think it’s the routesetting style. Quite the contrary- I think that the gen. pub. loves seeing young men and young women huck themselves at holds ropeless 15 feet off the ground.

My personal theory is that sport climbing, to Bob and Betty Smith, has an air of danger that bouldering does not. A world cup wall, 50-70 feet tall (a complete guess at the height, I’ll admit) seems much more imposing than a 15 foot boulder. The climber seems much more brave, and the (completely bombproof and safe) climbing rope seems completely unlikely to hold the 10-15 foot fall each climber takes.

Think of how much of a draw it is to see Alex Honnold and Kevin Jorgeson climb 30-60 foot highballs ropeless. I think it’s exciting. I feel that sport climbing, to the general public, appears dangerous and generates that kind of excitement.

But that’s just my $0.02. And I could be wrong.