Olympics

Sanllan

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

I know, it was awesome, but they didn't make the same guys mountain bike as the guys in the Velodrome.

ViperScale wrote: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...

Mountain Biking became an Olympic sport in 1996. There is a constructed outdoor course for each Olympics.

Maybe some time with Google before you keep posting incorrect assumptions?

ViperScale wrote:As soon as they added anything that requires a judge they were over imo,...

In that case you'd need to go back 70+ years. Most Olympic sports, summer and winter, are determined by judges and not time.

Sanllan wrote:mtb cross country is in the olimpics. at least at rio

Or for that matter, BMX.
Could you imagine them making all the cyclists, BMX'rs, Mountain bikers, and Speed Cyclists compete in all three events? The quality overall of the events would plummet because the best BMX'rs would not make it because they couldn't compete on the Velodrome and vice versa.
If they would keep all the diciplines separate but wanted to add a climbing Triathlon Id be more interested in seeing it.

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?

Dynamic movement. And plenty of speed climbers are good at other disciplines. I suspect you're probably not turning away 5.13 partners in any case.

Maybe speed climbing is meant for olympics but not the other disciplines. the 100 mts. race will always be 100 mts. and the texture of the track will always be the same. only changes might be weather conditions.

It would be grat if the made speed climbing really long. so it can start as an olympic sport with 0 records.

Sanllan wrote:Maybe speed climbing is meant for olympics but not the other disciplines.

Why? There are already long established World Cup competitions for lead climbing and bouldering. The transition to the Olympics for those is arguably easier than for speed climbing.

But you change the routes so no records will be established (apart for more medals). while speed climbing is like running 100 mts. tracks, always the same but humans always improving.

I don´t like speed climbing, but the format is more meant to be in the olympics over the other disciplines.

Sanllan wrote:But you change the routes so no records will be established (apart for more medals).

Yet this is true of a lot of other disciplines. An incomplete list would include:
Skiing - pretty much all the sub-disciplines
Snowboarding - many of the sub-disciplines
Kayaking
Mtn Biking
equestrian - some events
marathon
lots of others....

In fact it may be easier to list the subset of events that don't change courses/routes each Olympics

Sanllan wrote:But you change the routes so no records will be established (apart for more medals). while speed climbing is like running 100 mts. tracks, always the same but humans always improving. I don´t like speed climbing, but the format is more meant to be in the olympics over the other disciplines.

Well to a large degree this is probably true. Climbing doesn't belong in the Olympics you could have routes set that favor one climber over another. However it also pretty much takes all of what makes climbing special out.

Why not just have a ladder and see who can climb to the top of the ladder the fastest! Because that is basically what speed climbing is, requires not thinking just repeating the same thing over and over again.

ViperScale wrote: Why not just have a ladder and see who can climb to the top of the ladder the fastest! Because that is basically what speed climbing is, requires not thinking just repeating the same thing over and over again.

There was an interview with Hans Florine a while back on training beta. While I think most of us associate him with El Cap speed ascents he's been competing in the speed comps in Europe for a while. His perspective was that the climber who won the speed comps was usually also the person who climbed the hardest on regular routes out of all the competitors. Not sure if he was climbing in the same format as current competitions, but I found that kind of surprising.

A perspective on the compromise being made, with some more interviews and input from those involved.

climbing.com/news/vertical-…

So Ondra is obviously going to be a favorite. I have never really followed competition climbing, who else will be competing and favored to win? Alex Megos? Ashima? Alex Puccio? Looking at the IFSC website there are a ton of climbers I've never heard of, and many of the names I know aren't in the top 5. I assume this is partially due to some top climbers not focusing on indoor competitions?

Ondra Olympics video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwTtPWxTRyI