Olympics

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It's like a triathlon of climbing, except that doesn't exist.
It'll bring some attention to climbing. Just not sure if I want the attention brought to it or not.

mountainproject.com/v/climb…

Thank you.

Speed climbing isn't real climbing.

ViperScale wrote:Speed climbing isn't real climbing.

So what? Psicobloc isn't "real climbing" either, but a lot of people like to watch. And speed climbing has been around in one form or another for at least 40 years.

How do you get a ticket for the Olympics?

I'm not seeing anything on Ticketmaster.

Bill Czajkowski wrote:How do you get a ticket for the Olympics? I'm not seeing anything on Ticketmaster.

Do you really want to know or are you just being facetious?

Marc801 wrote: Do you really want to know or are you just being facetious?

Yeah, actually I'd like to know.

Bill Czajkowski wrote: Yeah, actually I'd like to know.

Basically, you either buy a package from a tour operator - which can also include travel and lodging - or you buy them from the official Olympic event website.
For the 2002 Olympics in SLC, tickets were made available on the event website about a year (or more?) before the event.
For some of the major events, you can buy tickets singly or in pairs - eg: opening and closing ceremony, women's figure skating final, etc. - but most are part of a ticket package. Because of this there's lots of resale on the aftermarket. For example, one of our packages was:
men's combined, downhill portion
women's downhill
men's super G
parallel snowboard
women's slalom
10k men's XC

We sold the XC tickets for $50 each. The packaging was also how we got tickets to the ice dancing mandatories (we watched the first 1/3 then wandered around the downtown Olympic complex).

They're not cheap. SLC opening ceremony were $800 each. The package I quoted above was around $600.

Marc801 wrote: So what? Psicobloc isn't "real climbing" either, but a lot of people like to watch. And speed climbing has been around in one form or another for at least 40 years.

Speed climbing from a competition standpoint has only been around since 2007... there is a reason very few real climbers ever compete in it. Big difference between doing a "speed run" on el cap vs climbing the same plastic wall over and over again.

ViperScale wrote: Speed climbing from a competition standpoint has only been around since 2007... there is a reason very few real climbers ever compete in it.

I'm pretty sure they were doing speed climbing comps in Eastern Europe a long time before the first Arco comp.

IIRC they were all outside on natural rock, maybe in the Crimea?
I think they had alpine speed contests in the Tien Shan too.

Probably a good ST question.

Mark E Dixon wrote: I'm pretty sure they were doing speed climbing comps in Eastern Europe a long time before the first Arco comp.

Correct:

"The first climbing competitions were organized in the former USSR in the late 1940s. These events were focused on Speed Climbing, and were mostly dedicated to Soviet climbers until the 1980s."

ifsc-climbing.org/index.php…

ViperScale wrote: Speed climbing... there is a reason very few real climbers ever compete in it. Big difference between doing a "speed run" on el cap vs climbing the same plastic wall over and over again.

Demographics are about to disprove that assertion:

"To many “real” climbers, speed climbing is a joke or just something that those “crazy Russians” do. What those out of touch climbers do not know is that speed climbing is the fastest growing aspect to our sport since bouldering became popular in the late 90’s and early 00’s.

In 2010 the US received its first official speed climbing wall. Today there are ten speed walls in commercial climbing gyms and three more are in construction; two are 15 meter speed walls and the rest are 10 meter."

climbingbusinessjournal.com…

ViperScale wrote: Speed climbing from a competition standpoint has only been around since 2007... there is a reason very few real climbers ever compete in it. Big difference between doing a "speed run" on el cap vs climbing the same plastic wall over and over again.

Some U.S. gyms have been running speed climbing competitions (albeit as a "fun" event and not to any national or international standard) at least since the early 90s.

Fine if you want to speed climb go for it but it takes out so much of what makes climbing. If I was to go outside to climb I would never pick a speed climbing partner over someone of other disciplines do to all the skills they lose, you don't really gain anything for outdoor climbing from someone who speed climbs.

What skills do you gain from speed climbing that translate to real climbing outdoors?

Marc801 wrote: Basically, you either buy a package from a tour operator - which can also include travel and lodging - or you buy them from the official Olympic event website. For the 2002 Olympics in SLC, tickets were made available on the event website about a year (or more?) before the event. For some of the major events, you can buy tickets singly or in pairs - eg: opening and closing ceremony, women's figure skating final, etc. - but most are part of a ticket package. Because of this there's lots of resale on the aftermarket. For example, one of our packages was: men's combined, downhill portion women's downhill men's super G parallel snowboard women's slalom 10k men's XC We sold the XC tickets for $50 each. The packaging was also how we got tickets to the ice dancing mandatories (we watched the first 1/3 then wandered around the downtown Olympic complex). They're not cheap. SLC opening ceremony were $800 each. The package I quoted above was around $600.

I had a totally different experience in 2002. I didn't buy any tickets online. There were so many people trying to scalp tickets that they totally flooded the market. My brother and I would show up to most events about 15 minutes after it started and there would be dozens of scalpers in the parking lot practically giving away tickets just to get something for them. We saw ski jumping, several hockey games, luge, bobsled, snowboard slalom, etc. and we got into many events for less than a movie ticket!

Opening ceremonies and events like figure skating were way more expensive, but the smaller sports were ridiculously cheap.

ViperScale wrote:Fine if you want to speed climb go for it but it takes out so much of what makes climbing. If I was to go outside to climb I would never pick a speed climbing partner over someone of other disciplines do to all the skills they lose, you don't really gain anything for outdoor climbing from someone who speed climbs. What skills do you gain from speed climbing that translate to real climbing outdoors?

So what? Who ever said it was about any of that? Like many other Olympic sports, the desire is something that videos well and attracts viewers.

It's like asking a mountain biker to cycle in a velodrome. Two very different disciplines. Like asking a 400 meter hurdler to do a 50 meter sprint.

Olympics are just sad really. They should be able seeing who can physically perform something without question the best. As soon as they added anything that requires a judge they were over imo, if you don't have something you can video and say not who a judge thinks is best but who is unquestionably the best based off like passing a line first it is a joke.

Johnny Kipp wrote:It's like asking a mountain biker to cycle in a velodrome. Two very different disciplines. Like asking a 400 meter hurdler to do a 50 meter sprint.

But at the same time those are 2 different things. If they wanted to get a mountain bike course together they could do it really. They don't because it would be to much work to build a new course in the real wilderness to race on or build a realistic simulated course... but than racing around a track to see who is the fastest isn't mountain biking it is just a bike race.

mtb cross country is in the olimpics. at least at rio