Who Really Won the Rock Climbing Olympics?

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0:00 Olympic Climbing Debut
1:09 What went wrong
2:38 Womens Olympic Finals
8:14 Mens Olympic Finals
13:06 The Big Maths
19:47 Who actually won the Olympics
25:37 If Speed Climbing wasn't in the Olympics
27:50 Final Thoughts
#climbing #bouldering #speedclimbing #olympics #climbingstuff

[@ReillyQuizzle]

Here so early the camera didn’t have time to focus

[@FuserOfSouls]

Seems like he did this on purpose as a prank, as he is always constantly hitting us with that good ol’ dry humor 😂😂😅

[@ribbitfroog]

wondering if it was just me

[@benedekfodor269]

im pretty sure he recorded with a car reversing camera through an intercom underwater

[@T1ddlywinks]

I had to check my resolution lmao

[@FEMIBUBBLE]

please please please fix the camera

[@N.Coleman]

B3 was actually the 2nd hardest bloc in the round, according to the routesetters. The reason no one sent was a collective oversight by all of us finalists during route preview. Everyone got locked in to the wrong beta, and looking back, the correct beta was a pretty simple solution. At 10:24 you see Colin with his right hand on the zone, left hand on a pinch formed by 2 jib screw ons. Intended beta was to flip the left hand pinch to an undercling, and move right hand to the volume above the zone. From there, left hand to the furthest left volume, right hand in to the last unused screw on, and left hand to the finish volume. Reusing a handhold in a different way to make progress on a climb is a relatively simple trick that most climbers will learn in their first year of climbing... the fact that none of us thought of it is something I still can't really rationalize. But they say the pressure of the Olympics creates unheard of scenarios, so I guess we'll just say "shit happens". Anyway, great video, interesting and funny as always!

[@capucined7574]

I certainly did not scroll through the comments thinking I'd end up reading the insight of an olympian explaining how the boulder I always viewed as untoppable wasn't actually the hardest one of the competition. Did you end up topping it/watching someone who topped it? Congrats on your competition and on the silver medal anyway!

[@YoyMcFroy]

Wow how do you know so much? *Checks name* Oh ok

[@N.Coleman]

@@capucined7574 thanks homie! Unfortunately no one was allowed to try the boulders after the round, so I never saw it topped. But apparently a few route setters did the moves in forerunning

[@mitchyboyzz]

@@N.ColemanDamn. It would have been great for all of you to get another crack without the timer.

[@wurststulle666]

shouldn't have put the camera in the aquarium

[@podfuk]

He was born that way, you insensitive hater🤣🤣🤣

[@CombatWombat-nq2fc]

Speed climbing being included was a crime

[@peterl0815]

this whole discipline is a crime ... the least of the gyms have speed climbing walls . it's boring and it's useless. 🤮

[@utribal5258]

@@peterl0815 It's just a sprint but vertical. Not my discipline either, but respect to the athletes. For them it's also a lot more fair to split the discipline from lead & boulder

[@mrroboto18]

I would be into speed climbing if they changed the route periodically. The official one was set in 30 minutes by someone who had no idea it would become "the route". It just seems so incredibly random

[@user-dt9xb7sn2q]

I used to like the original speed climbing, where the route was unique for every event. Was a lot of fun actually.

[@jamrollz]

@@mrroboto18 Yeah agreed. Imagine if lead or bouldering had the exact same set in every comp for decades. There even were speed events with novel walls in the past idk why we dont do that officially in ifsc/olympics

[@noone-ld7pt]

There is this very common belief that since the Olympics is hailed as the absolute pinacle of sports they have to be competent at what they're doing right? But the more you look into it the more absurd it gets. Like take the introduction of climbing as an example: it has 3 very distinct diciplines was denied a gold medal for each for some reason, but there are 6 gold medals for fucking canoe slalom, which mind you is separate from canoe sprint which has 10 gold medals. Like what in the actual fuck?! And don't even get me started on swimming, the amount of medals for the same sport is beyond absurd. Sure people will say "it's like running, different distances and styles require vastly different abilities ", but that is so fucking easily disproven cause ONE GUY FUCKIN WON THEM ALL FOR LIKE 3 STRAIGHT OLYMPICS! And then there is the doping problem. Like the instance where an athlete got 7th in weightlifting but then received a medal in the mail years later because 4 or 5 of the athletes ahead of him was caught after the fact. Wonder if the moment opening a fucking letter in the living room was as epic as standing on the podium representing your country. And out of the top 30 fastest 100m times in history only 9 of them are by an athlete not associated with doping. And ALL 9 of them are by Usain Bolt! At that point they should just stop pretending they're trying and just do the enhanced games instead. Ok rant over. Been pissed at the Olympic comitee for a while now so I had to vent.

[@steveman851]

Every single Olympic athlete dopes. The only reason why some athletes get caught while others don't is purely due to internal politics. Do you really think the worlds fastest man is natural when second place runners have been caught doping? 🤨

[@Duderos]

Then you should better not look into the amount of medals for shooting ... f''ng shooting

[@johnmarc1986]

Swimming is hilarious. I get the different distances but the different styles is like let's see who's the fastest at running backwards. So stupid.

[@micahvandam9658]

@@johnmarc1986ngl, it would be kinda fun to do that with climbing: Lead campusing, boulder campusing, no-hand bouldering, speed lead, campus board high reach, campus board triple high reach, speed campus board, partner climbing, dance climbing, decathlon involving put shoes on, campus board 3 times, 50 pull-ups, speed wall, lead wall, or something like that.

[@janbecker4744]

😅

[@trautsj]

Climbing: Has an actual established, thought out and genuinely decent scoring system The Olympics: yea, fuck that system, we're making something else on a whim and winging it baby!!! This is supposed to be the highest level of sport... actually just embarrassing tbh.

[@davidk3567]

It was the Ifsc that decided to score it like that for whatever reason

[@colemantrebor6574]

the combined scoring system didnt exist at the time of the 2020 (2021) olympics

[@luissun2103]

It's the first editions... first they have to prove it can be entertaining, then they can go on from that. If we wanted to see boulder, lead and speed on different categories, think about the logistics. It would be 3 times the current cost on climbing for the olmpics, at leats. 3 times more athletes (or so), 3 times more trainers and staff, probably more time, so more arena time, more staff, more evertything.... I believe i's just a matter of time. At the very beggining, track&field was also an "combined scoring" of various modalities.

[@colemantrebor6574]

@@luissun2103 Yeah, we can already see that with speed now being separate. Maybe in 2028 boulder and lead will become separate. I'd love to see both a combined event and invidivual events for boulder and lead eventually

[@alexbenjaminrosenthal3989]

I want to defend the scoring system a little. Yes, it sucked, yes, first place is overvalued, but it's not the real crime from that olympics. Semis were fine with that scoring system, for example. Two things happened that really ruined finals, especially men's. 1- Boulder setting was horrible. With only three boulders, each one is even more important than normal. But there were complete dud boulders in both mens and women's finals. No one topped W3, and everyone got the exact same score on M3. Completely useless boulders, making the boulder round full of ties and almost-ties. 2- when Bassa pulled out due to injury, they didn't re-seed the speed bracket. Adam, the very worst speed climber, got an automatic 4th place. He lost every race with terrible times, but Collin, Nathaniel, and Jacob all scored worse because Adam got a free win. Alberto also benefitted, going up against Adam instead of Bassa, who would have demolished him. In re-seeded scenario, Alberto could still have won speed, but it would have been much tougher. As is he got basically a free win against the 8th seed Adam. So yes, the scoring system sucked, but even with a good scoring system, the boulder setting was terrible and the speed rules were somehow even worse than normal.

[@johnmarc1986]

I'd like to see him redo his scoring system but based on best time in speed, not where you placed.

[@noone-ld7pt]

Not sure that's defending the scoring system as much as just pointing out 2 other massive mistakes. But thanks for sharing, I didn't remember Adam automatically getting 4th, that shit is absolutely wild. And while the setting definitely was pretty bad, and I feel like the decision to have only 3 boulders was probably worse. Cause bad setting will happen from time to time because of how hard it is to differentiate the top athletes. Like a boulder that everyone flashes is mathetematically just as bad as one that everyone just get's zone or even one that noone does (maybe not form a spectator pov, but we're here to find the best after all). And there is an incredibly simple way of increasing the chance of the best climber winning while decreasing the impact of a bad setting: Just increase the amount of boulders. Imo there should be 5, and 3 is just absurd.

[@beckobert]

Thank you for pointing out the problem with Bassa dropping out and Ondra getting gifted an undeserved 4th place. While watching, it was what annoyed me the most about the competition, even as a Adam Ondra fan.

[@eopo]

so big of a pewds fan your webcam quality automatically decreases to 144p

[@pristizastavka]

I think an important thing to mention is that back then there was no such thing as the official ifsc scoring system for boulder+lead (the 200 pts one) - it was only created last year for the Paris olympics. Before Tokio, they never combined disciplines together so this was their first attempt at creating a reasonable combined scoring system. And as we’ve seen in Tokio, this first attempt was pretty terrible.

[@redpoin7]

I didn't realize how fucked up scoring actually was in the last olympics... Crazy!

[@sparrowman6077]

My dad tried to get me into golf my entire life….. and I started rock climbing when I was 14 instead…. I still don’t golf - even when he would give me clubs or take me to the range - and well, I still rock climb 👍 25 years later and multiple surgeries (couple knee, couple shoulder), and I have NO regrets. Keep climbing y’all 🤙🎉

[@ciso344]

What does this have to do with the video LOL

[@sparrowman6077]

@@ciso344 I guess you didn’t pick up on the part about scoring it like golf

[@n3v3r1s4]

@@ciso344 well, 2:21 xD

[@AlecKnjazihhin]

Nice 👍

[@davidisnotoriginal4360]

Sounds like your dad was making a lot of effort to spend time with you bro. Why not do both?

[@luke_mckay]

"Ef you, I don't need a reason" Top tier rebuttal

[@SNIP3RIS1]

what's with the 144p webcam

[@arthurg1425]

It's intently focused on his mic stand

[@greeboart]

The only issue with your scoring system is that it ignores the giant mistake with the speed climb format. Adam only scored as well as he did is because he won his first race by default as Basa injured himself in qualifying and DNS'd the final. In the speed bracket system the first place qualifier (Basa, a speed climber and much faster than the other competitors) races the last place speed qualifier (Adam). As Basa did not compete in the final, Adam got a bye and an artificial placement thus placing him higher in the speed portion.

[@greengraycolor]

This is brilliant, you are a genius, I'm moving to this alternative reality.

[@dizietz]

I thought you were gonna do our boy Alberto dirty but you did him fair!

[@Utigard1989]

ya he seems to be destroying ondra these days

[@ossipdehaan837]

@@Utigard1989 you watched the video?

[@Fabianwew]

Destroying him in what? ​@@Utigard1989

[@09paradox]

At least this year the climbing Olimpic’s will not be a “pro climber try speed climbing for the first time”

[@AdrianCaldwell5]

bro he put his camera in the deep fryer and his chicken on the tripod 😭

[@alexandrelapalme1943]

If I remember well the whole story is even worse. First, Adam Ondra got a free run on speed because of Bassa Mawem's injury. Then, on boulder #3, everyone flashed the zone but Adam Ondra was the only one to use the next hold, so if the zone was this next hold, he would have gotten higher up in the ranking for the bouldering round, potentially influencing the results. It may sound ridiculous but I feel like the zone was misplaced since everyone flashed it, not separating the athletes at all.

[@jukethecoopyt393]

I agree Bassa Mawem injury changed a lot of things. He was the only speed specialist so it is fair to assume he would have taken first meaning Alberto would have got second in that.

[@HourRomanticist]

Jakob by accounts of outdoor/comp is the most decorated climber to ever exist. The amount of competitions he has won is greater than Adam Ondra, and his climbing accomplishments outdoors are nearly comparable. I hope him, Ondra, and Megos do well this Olympics.

[@testest-pl4qw]

What do you mean most decorated outdoor/comp? Surely you mean decorated comp climber? Which he definitely is. But if you were to do some kind of math weighing hard outdoor ascents with number of gold medals, Ondra would be way ahead. With all due respect to Schubert who is incredible, but Ondra is only a few gold medals behind him while also, during his competition career, having pushed outdoor grades not only once but twice (9b+ and 9c). His number of ascents harder than 9a is also unparalleled with twenty 9b:s, four 9b+ and one 9c, compared to Schubert with seven 9b:s, one 9b+, and one 9c. Not that comparable. There's even speculation Ondra might have been the first to boulder 9A with Terranova (though Schubert has one 9A confirmed). Also interesting, Ondra has more bouldering gold medals and is still the only male to win gold in both disciplines the same year. Just some perspective! Hope they all get their deserved revenge this Oympics :)

[@matthewsevers5862]

@@testest-pl4qwgreat comment. As far as gold in both disciplines are you talking about world championships? Colin Duffy won gold in both boulder and lead at the same World Cup in Innsbruck 2022 for example.

[@testest-pl4qw]

​​@@matthewsevers5862yeah only one to get both gold in both lead and bouldering during a world championship event (2014). Just mind blowing. But yeah Duffy is the only one to do it during the same world cup event, in Innsbruck 2022. Considering there are quite a few world cup events each year it's kind of surprising it hasn't been done before or since. But Duffy is unreal.

[@PPKFilms]

You mean most decorated male climber ? Janja has 28 lead gold, 17 boulder golds, 2 lead world champ, 3 boulder world champ, 3 combined gold, to Jakob's 21, 3, 4, 0 and 2 respectively. So Jakob has only won 2 more world championships in lead than Janja, and he is 8 years older.

[@user-ti4xj3zf8j]

This video needs some more attention.

[@motherlove8366]

It really doesn't, we've run those what ifs and rants to the ground already, last olympics are widely viewed by most fans as a joke and the whole system completely changed now.

[@chadrambo1038]

Just subscribed… This is now one of my favorite climbing channels, period.

[@triplea657aaa]

One guy actually got severely injured and had his bicep rip off of his bones because of the severe difference in muscular activity between bouldering/lead and speed climbing...

[@DaxxterDreams]

Yeah I don't think the combined format was the reason for the injury.

[@johnmarc1986]

​@DaxxterDreams you don't think the over training required for competing in 3 very different climbing disciplines contributed to the injury?

[@beckobert]

@@johnmarc1986In athletics there is a decathlon with 10(!) even more different disciplines and athletes there are doing fine, usually. Professional sports always carrys a risk on injury, but saying that three different styles a climbing is too much sounds ignorant.

[@G.Giorgio]

Alberto performed pretty well in oqs for paris

[@androgynousmaggot9389]

Yep, he was pretty consistent after the Olympics! He definitely knew people were talking he didn't deserve the gold! He sure prove them wrong! Even if Ondra and Narasaki were my favourites, they underperformed! Specially Tomoa on M2, a boulder he usually could flash blindfolded! At least Akiyo brought home a medal!

[@androgynousmaggot9389]

6:25 I love your choice of photos! 😂 Our Lord and Saviour Tomoa shines as usual! (God, he's hot af!!)

[@sergimila1206]

In fact the maths used by the Olympics regulation (unprecedent) is so simple. It is the volume of a Rectangular Parallelepiped, so the position in each of the 3 disciplines is the length x height x width = volume of the Parallelepiped. Winner is who gets the less volume. If you think about it, it overestimates too much the 1st places. And it does not make sense at all.

[@simonwilliams9850]

Alberto Gines Lopez still seems to be doing alright without speed climbing

[@a-j.2002]

He's great. His bouldering is a bit inconsistent (also, he has had a sprained ankle for a couple months) but he's a top5 lead climber. We need to understand that they had to choose what to train for Tokyo and he might have decided to go harder on speed because he could have an advantage. You remove speed, you never know what they all do in lead+boulder with different training.

[@bsb3339]

He kinda won speed though more due to circumstances, rather than being the best speed climber of the finalists. First of all the only actual speed climber left injured himself and Mickael with a much faster time than him slipped in the last round. I don't think he even had the 3rd or 4th quickest time, but rather had luck with his opponents with how the tournament tree was set up. Still he is an amazing lead climber and I hope he'll give us a good performance as such at the paris olympics!

[@RipperJack77]

I think a big part of why nobody thinks Alberto deserved the Gold was the fact that he got insanely lucky on his way to win speed. In Round 1, he got a default win because Colin did a false start In Round 2, he faced Adam, the worst speed climber who was there because the best speed climber was injured In Round 3, Tomoa was ahead and then slipped One more interesting way to give an alternative ranking to speed is to just take the best time of three attempts. In this case Alberto is 5th instead of 1st.

[@HawkIze757]

Phenomenal video, great work!

[@ak47rockin47]

I’ve been so curious about this too! Great video and thanks for doing the maths for us

[@mikehayden7691]

You have my vote to do the coverage next Olympics

[@kongolandwalker]

The thing that multiplication system did better (even if it feels bad overall for oldies): 1. The scores were easy to calculate in head. Summing up to triple digits is harder than multiplication table. So new viewers could EASY IN, instead of being frightened by 4 digit math operations. 2. People, who got 1st place in a subdiscipline, got to the podium. Also very intuitive to a general audience (even if climber nerds omit that fact). And it still valued performance of other subdisciplines, it increases the likelyhood that first place leads to podium, but does not guarantee it, 1 7 7 would give 49, which is worse than 2 2 2 = 8. Note that for the federation the more important part was to prove its validity as an olympic event and to establish its place forever. For that you need to expand to new audiences. And only after that they got opportunity to split disciplines, and have the freedom to impliment older systems. I say they did the right decision then to use the system and did the right decision to change it after. Btw, in combined systems there will always be problems like in voting systems. Depending of what assumptions about "fair system" you have you will implement different algorithms.

[@Thanks_Dad]

This video is absolutely bloody amazing. Thank you for your service o7

[@Fearless0401]

Crazy good video! Loved every second

[@1984HasCome]

What if we rank speed climbing by their actual times not the bracket?

[@pancakes5581]

wouldn't be super accurate because those that lost in the first round only have 1 time to go off of an average/best time

[@Monkchelle_Kongbama]

@@pancakes5581 rank by one and done, then

[@channelsquad1222]

If we’re talking about the Olympics, can we please get a video about how frequently climbers are injured? They even made a comment during IFSC finals about how many athletes had tape on their wrists

[@PeterTeal77]

Was this specific to the Olympics in some way or typical for pro-climbing? (I don't follow the sport)

[@ElGuapoDeSantoPoco]

Doesn't surprise me , with this ninja parkour shit they call bouldering 😂

[@colemantrebor6574]

Wrist taping doesn't have to be about having a injury, it's often for injury prevention, just like people use belts in weight lifting

[@noone-ld7pt]

@@ElGuapoDeSantoPoco Yea the multi-dino's does seem to have gotten out of hand over the years.

[@ElGuapoDeSantoPoco]

@@noone-ld7pt The biggest problem is, with this triple jump double paddle dynos, (aside that his has nothing to do with climbing) you mostly get seperation on number of attempts , so if you are "lucky" you score higher then your oppenent .

[@Luvdoggies]

That was awesome! Thank you for that!

[@Jivewired]

Awesome video man, thanks for crunching the numbers on this. Really interesting to see how it would/should have shaken out given the current scoring system. I agree with your adjustments for boulder and the 30-90 normalization of speed, pretty much the best that could be done to map onto the current system. Bouldering does wind up relatively under-weighted but that's more a function of the problem set.

[@benoitcerrina]

I do think the new system is much better than the previous one, if only because speed is separated. However I think it should still be improved. Basically the intention is to have lead and bouldering having the same weight but that is very dependant on the setting. If one or two boulders are two hard and lead is normal (meaning at least one person is close to 100 points) the bouldering points end up maxing around 50 and lead becomes the only thing that counts, and the opposite is true. I would have used the same system but normalized the scores of the 2 disciplines before adding them up (basically recompute the score so they always end up with a spread from 0 to 100 with the first at 100 the lowest at 0 and people spread in between linearly compared to their original score). Anyway long live sports climbing!!

[@jeremybini]

Agreed! This video glosses over the fact that the current IFSC scoring for combined is pretty shit, since it's entirely reliant on the setters getting the difficulty correct between the lead route and the whole boulder round. Normalizing each round to 100 would fix so many issues (and would have had some real impact on OQS this year)

[@benoitcerrina]

@@jeremybini yes. I can’t imagine they didn’t think about it. My guess is that backlash against multiplying the ranking meant one of their premise was as little math as possible. Hard to avoid additions but multiplication or worse divisions will lead to complaints

[@seanwestbrook9619]

The Olympics really fucked it in 2020.

[@paulogryzek4740]

GREAT video. Your scoring was very well-presented and it was also entertaining.

[@spage0]

Thanks for doing this! So good to see how it should have been

[@Cardsandstoagies]

Basically your system weights speed climbing an insanely high with a 17 point difference between places when points are earned by performance on a route when speed is ranked by placement.

[@tibormacek1708]

I'm putting my money on Janja. Let's go Slovenia.

[@Bloxeh]

wow, bold bet. haha

[@LironHaber]

y u r in 144p?

[@eSKAone-]

His trade mark

[@annikabean7509]

Good work boy, thank u.. this was genuinely interesting

[@annikabean7509]

Maybe I'm just a nerd tho

[@marcusfowler9080]

Your sacrifice has made us all better. Outstanding.

[@12sephiroth]

From Austria here. To be honest I'm a bit shocked, that Jakob would have had gold, in that scenario. I wasn't aware that in the new format, bouldering would have been that fricking close. But one thing i remember was, that i was extremely confused, why Jessica got 7th place, whilst perfomring pretty good. I did blame it on Speed, but apparently the scoring system back then was .... not thought through ^^'.

[@nicklommerse6916]

I love the fact that theres a bunch of hilarious edits but the video quality looks like how la croix tastes

[@shaun8191]

Ha good work this is great! And really encouraging for Paris scoring :) The only issue I see is that Ondra only got 4th in Speed because Mawem pulled out so Ondra got to the next round by default... So the speed should be scored on average times rather than the tournament position ;)

[@heighRick]

Appreciating all the maths Climbing Stuff, thanks, helps a lot! #speedClimbingCanDoOne

[@pablolorenzosanchez5183]

Great video man

[@lucyoung6977]

What I don't understand is that your grading system for speed has the same issue as the overall games. You attribute points based on placement rather than performance. If you want to know who performed the best you give the athletes points proportionally to their times compared to that of the world record (for the 21 Olympics it was 5.25s). For example, if you match or beat the world record, you get 100 points. Zero points would be for a time of lets say maybe 8 seconds or more. So I did the math and I found in order 1 Narasaki 70.7 points 2 Coleman 63.9 points 3 Duffy 58.9 points 4 Mawem 58.6 points 5 Lopez 58.6 points 6 Schurbert 44.3 points 7 Ondra 44 points So adding up all the scores while using the bouldering B scores. We get our new order: 1 Schuburt 203.9 points 2 Coleman 200.8 points 3 Duffy 198.7 points 4 Narasaki 184.5 points 5 Ondra 175.3 points 6 Lopez 167.8 points 7 Mawem 144.6 points So based on this Ginez-Lopez should not have come close to gold. If you take your bouldering scores from A the only difference is that Nathanial Coleman wins by the smallest of margins. Although, I will admit that my speed grading system is not the best since I think you should do something similar to lead where the closer you are to the world record the more points you get and it takes away from the thrill of watching an elimination bracket phase.

[@severin2004]

Alberto Gino Lopez winning was still impressive tho and i see him actually doing great next Olympics too.

[@n3v3r1s4]

This is a very comprehensive shitting on the 2020 olympic format, impressive! I actually understand the why it was so bad now, it's not even the fact that speed climbing was involved but truly the multiplication system was just retarded

[@pengc6538]

Didn't they just come up with the point system like last year? It also changes the way they set.

[@bonvoyageauLSD]

IFSC should have just taken the tough decision to not include Speed when they only were able to have one discipline in the Olympics. The terrible scoring system was a direct result of including speed, and to give speed climbers a chance to qualify.

[@laurajames2075]

I've heard some interesting commentary that speed should have been the only Olympic sport the first year. It's the biggest driver of non-climber engagement cos it's so simple. Include the other disciplines when they get more medals. Makes a big of sad sense

[@3000SethG]

This is the best video ever. Thank you.

[@mcclunky3093]

Extremely serious video suggestion: dress up as Adam Ondra and impersonate him at your local crag to see if anyone is fooled, complete with power screaming. You have a passing resemblance to him and I think you could pull it off

[@owenpayne7692]

Sorry this started out as a short comment but once I started, I got proper into it. Makes me appreciate how much effort you must have put into your video so well done, really insightful and got yourself a new subscriber! Really cool to see how a more logical scoring system would have impacted things. It's mental that Adam went from 1st overall to 6th because he dropped one place in Lead. Maybe the Olympic committee felt the multiplier system was more exciting as it definitely causes some drama and late upsets but it was still pretty upsetting to see. One of the other most memorable examples of this was in the 2020 European Combined Championships in Moscow where there was one final spot for the Tokyo Olympics for whoever came 1st overall. Going into the final Lead round, Sascha Lehmann and Alexsei Rubtsov were battling it out for 1st overall, with Alexsei having a combined score of 5 (S5, B1) and Sascha a combined score of 12 (S4, B3). Alexsei came out before Sascha and put in a great performance which got him 2nd in the Lead ranking. Sascha was next and to get 1st place he had to, not only top the route, but do it in a faster time than Sergei Luzhetskii (who had also topped it). Sascha was up to the challenge and managed a blisteringly quick climb, finishing the route with like 3:29 left on the clock! This put him into 1st place in the Lead and left the overall scores with Sascha on 12 (S4, B3, L1) and Aleksei now on 15 (S5, B1, L3). One more athlete to go…out comes Yuval Shemla. Yuval at this stage is on a total of 48 (S8, B6), so has no way of getting the final Olympic spot and so everyone thinks that Sascha has won it. Yuval proceeds up the route with a crazy amount of speed and manages to top it even faster than Sascha, with 3:40 on the clock! Doing so doesn't change his score but bumps Sascha to 2nd in the Lead and Alexsei to 4th in the lead. This then left everyone frantically doing the maths trying to work out who had qualified. Due to Alexsei's better performance earlier in Boulder and Speed, being knocked down a spot in Lead affected him less. Sascha's overall score went to 24 (S4, B3, L2) and Alexsei's went to 20 (S5, B1, L4), which bagged him 1st place overall. It was pretty crazy and I experienced a mixture of emotions seeing the sudden explosion of joy on Alexsei's face when he found out he'd won but the utter disappointment on Sascha's as he realised his Olympic dream was over. Especially hard for Sacha, as he had done so well to top the route only to be pipped because someone out of contention managed to best everyone on the Lead route. Not knocking Yuval at all, absolute incredible effort for getting to the top (and faster than anyone else) but was so heartbreaking for Sascha who probably thought he'd done enough to qualify (great to see he's qualified for the Olympics this year btw). Anyway, went off on a bit of a tangent there but when I describe to people how bonkers the Olympic scoring system for sport climbing can be, I always bring up that event as I remember the drama when watching it all unfold. Back to the Olympics, I think one of the biggest issues I have, was how they dealt with Bassa Mawem having to pull out due to injury (poor guy btw, was gutted for him). I'm not sure on the specific rules, but at the time I thought they might bring Alex Megos into the finals as he finished 9th in qualifiers, but for whatever reason they left it as is and essentially gave Adam a walkover in the speed due to it being set up in a bracket format (which is pretty dumb imo). Had Bassa competed, he likely would have won the speed, as he got a new OR of 5.45s during the qualifiers and no-one broke 6s in the finals. If that had happened (basically Bassa wins his side of the bracket and everything else in the bracket happens more or less the same), it would have resulted in pretty different outcome. It's obviously impossible to know how Bassa would have fared in bouldering and Lead, but let's just say he would have got 8th in both, due to the fact he came last out of the qualifiers for both (albeit his Lead score being due to the fact he ruptured his bicep tendon). The result would have put Nathaniel in 1st overall thanks to his excellent boulder score, Tomoa in 2nd thanks to his good scores in B&L and then Jakob would have still have grabbed 3rd thanks to his excellent Lead score. Alberto would have been bumped way down and tied for last with Adam! Again, not knocking any of the athletes as you can only work with what you're given and it was great to see that Alberto still would have won regardless of how you score the event. However, I think it really shows how important (and maybe overpowered) getting 1st place in one of the disciplines was for your combined score with that system! I also think there should have been 4 boulders to minimise the impact of the setting not quite being dialed (it's very difficult to set them just right to get the separation you want) but that's enough discussion I think! Good luck to all the athletes, thoroughly looking forward to watching them all compete in August!

[@ErikKarlstrom]

This plus the fact that the zone hold on boulder 3 was obviously too early would’ve meant Adam would’ve had been the only one reaching the zone on boulder 3

[@bobjenkins7570]

Amazing quality video! I enjoyed every second. The Dr. Strange bit had me weak 😂

[@aspuzling]

I definitely agree that a single attempt on a boulder should not be equivalent to 20 moves on the lead wall but this problem doesn't go away by replacing positions with points. You still have the issue when if the boulders turn out to be really hard the difference between a poor performance and a great one might be only 20 points which massively favours the lead specialists if the lead wall is relatively easy. I think the points should somehow be normalised so the best performer always gets 100 and then it all gets rescaled relatively. Either that or the setters better do a good job to create proper separation.

[@loltonstoryson6596]

I think that this is true, but the issue in his scoring system is caused by bad setting. It is not a flaw in the scoring system.

[@aspuzling]

@@loltonstoryson6596 I dunno. Why not have a scoring system that is resistant to bad route setting? They usually get it right but Tokyo 2020 proves they sometimes don't and then an unfair scoring system would compound on that.

[@loltonstoryson6596]

@@aspuzling I think that a scoring system that is resistant to bad route setting would not be as rewarding to excellent climbing.

[@ak47rockin47]

“‘why are you simping over Jessica Pilz so hard?’ First of all, f*ck you, I don’t need a reason”😂😂😂

[@CrispyCrimpsClimbing]

How does it always seem that you are completely dissing someone but end up with a really wholesome POV 🤣 Master Story Teller

[@southernstorm3218]

I loved this vid would you be able to do this with the Olympic climbing semi finals? Would it be much different

[@Crumblacrumbs]

you forgot to carry the 1

[@NatTay]

Long overdue for someone to make this video. Fair does to Alberto Gines Lopez for a fair win on the combined format but I’m really looking forward to Paris Lead and Boulder this year - I’m not sure what’s going on with the scoring but hope it’s gone back to normal. This years gonna be much more important to a lot of people.

[@landins443]

Got the chalk bucket! It does the free bag of chalk after you add it to cart. Also the Church is not listed in the survey as a reason for your purchase... that should be corrected.

[@eSKAone-]

Nice work!

[@malcolmkee8740]

1T1Z ranks higher than 0T3Z. 10pts for zone works just fine without bumping it up to 13.33pts. 1T1Z - 33.33pts 0T3Z - 40pts (if 13.33) 0T3Z - 30pts (if 10) Edit: assuming flashes without subtracting attempt counts which are -0.1pt per attempt

[@nathanrice7352]

Only thing I could imagine as a tweak would be removing the "head to head" nature of speed climbing, and assign scores to actual times. So your 30-90 scale would be mapped to the actual highest and lowest TIMES, not placements.

[@Gehirnautobahn]

I think you could use the speed world record as a reference for 100 points and then assign their points relative to that time.

[@clawwestfall8799]

​@@Gehirnautobahni like this idea!

[@static4nerdz]

bruh that’s literally the thumbnail for luds climbing video with magnus

[@AurelDuLac]

Why didn't you just take the 3 Boulders score on 75 points and did a simple Scorex100/75, way simpler math x)

[@wglao]

alternative speed scoring: fastest run across all matches gets 100 pts. other athletes gets 100 pts * fastest overall time / their fastest time. kind of assumes that fastest overall is also first place, but then you can weight it so that the time points are allotted 50 pts, and another 50 comes from linearly awarding points based on tournament placement

[@Moewie]

Have you thought about bouldering? I dislike the zone judging, since an athlete falling one move from the top gets the same points as an athlete doing a bunch of difficult moves less and barely gets to the zone are graded the same. I would suggest something similar as in lead just in percentages. So if there are 12 holds on a boulder and your “highpoint” was 8, you would get 100pts * 8 / 12.

[@wglao]

@@Moewie it wouldnt work quite the same because every hold in boulder is inherently not equally valuable, where the zones can roughly correspond to cruxy moves. For boulder one move farther in may not necessarily correspond to correct beta / higher chance at topping. It also gets needlessly complicated to award every hold a scoring value because each boulder is not the same number of holds and moves. Combine that further with each of the 4 (3 for Tokyo 2021) boulders meant to be set in a different style where moving one hold further may not be comparable between climbers. For example, in the coordination and slab boulders, some holds may end up being more important than others for different beta, but the scoring can’t account for every possible way to solve the problem.

[@colemantrebor6574]

@@Moewie that's just how it is. In soccer, one team can have 20 goal opportunities and almost 20 times, and the other team plays shit but gets 1 lucky goal and wins. Bouldering isn't about making as many moves as possible but about getting to the top of the boulder. The zone is just an addition to be able to judge ties.

[@AcuarioIbicencio]

how can you fix the score for the olimpics if you can not even fix your camera focus?

[@holstblock.web3]

Great video! Makes me appreciate math and always checking my camera settings 🤪 JK - I love how you probably just didn’t cared about it and uploaded anyways 🙂‍↕️

[@samvalentine9243]

Did you put a VHS look on your camera?

[@gkoleva]

Why is the video unavailable, I am so curious to watch it!

[@FB711_]

This is amazing. Imagine how the even finals competitors would have looked if a decent scoring system had been implemented from the start. How many other athletes might have been completely screwed over in the qualifiers?

[@andrewadams530]

So glad our friendly time traveler could travel back to 1975 to shoot this video with the first camera ever invented to make it seem even more authentic.

[@elliott9628]

Are they going to use the IFSC scoring system in Paris 2024 for combined boulder/lead?

[@DrueLubanski]

Hey, you actually could've saved your self a lot of trouble with the math part. Instead of making each boulder worth 33.3 you could have taken each person's original score, divide by 75, then just multiply it by 100. This would have given you the score out of 100, but you should get the same answer, just more difficulty. You would still need to factor in the zone and stuff, but ratios, the process I just showed, makes things easier

[@niels3674]

Even this scoring system doesn't make sense, because the Olympics was way more beneficial towards lead climbers, since the bouldering round was much harder to score points on than the lead round.

[@androgynousmaggot9389]

It's now perfect, busy without two zones, and 25 points per boulder is much better than the last Olympics! I watched the qualifying rounds, and it was pretty exciting, ngl! Even if bouldering now favours the younger athletes, that's because they all started training as kids on comp boulders, so their technique is top-notch and are just building strength! Anraku and Roberts are my favourites, maybe Schalck if he has a good day! Janja and Mori (if she manages to gain some explosivity)

[@TheLudiLove]

​@@androgynousmaggot9389 I think the scoring system is good now too. Unfortunately Mejdi Schalck didn't qualify for the olympics though!

[@noone-ld7pt]

Thank you for doing this! I was ranting so hard about how stupid the entire system was both before and after the last olympics and it feels good to have it conclusively and mathematically proven.

[@soejrd24978]

timestamp where

[@veronikahrovat4136]

Just don't be shitting on Alberto, it's not his fault he won :)

[@veronikahrovat4136]

@@user-bi9jq8eu4j i agree, it's just that he didn't invent this sistem, so it's not fair for him to get the hate

[@colemantrebor6574]

@@user-bi9jq8eu4j Every athlete knew how the scoring worked in advance, and thus they knew what they needed to do to win.

[@colemantrebor6574]

I think the fact that Jessica Pilz got 6th, 5th and 3rd and ended up 7th overall is a good showcase. She did better than 7th place in each round yet still got 7th. Maybe something as simple as this: 1st gets 8 points, 2nd gets 7 points, 3rd gets 6 points, ..., 7th gets 2 points and 8th gets 1 point. Most points overall wins.

[@noone-ld7pt]

No that still keeps the exact same problem (tho addition is slightly better than multplying). Like he said in the video you could end up with a pack of 5 athletes that have extremely similar performances but one could get 7 points and one will get 3 points and basically be immediately out of contention. The solution is very simple: Athletes should be scored on individual performance and not comparative performance. So the next step is deciding what quantifiable aspects should score a good indiviual performance? In lead it is simple; the more holds you manage to climb the higher the score, with higher holds being worth more. In bouldering it's a bit more complicated but not very: Getting to the top is the most important and Zones are second most important since these meassure how much the climber actually managed to climb the problems. And then attempts made should be the least impactful and mostly be a tie-breaker. While it's more complicated, this is the system the IFSC has landed on over years of running climbing competitions. With the core idea being that this gives each athlete an objective score representing how well they climbed, and then just at the very end we compare to see who climbed the best. Comparative scores like the 8-1 addition system you suggested will just never reflect accurately how close or far apart athletes performances are, which is a very important aspect of who actually did the best.

[@Mindcrawler23]

@@noone-ld7pt Exactly this. If you really want to rank the actual performance, the only solution is to bring the individual categories points over to the final ranking or you will lose that information and rank based on ranks instead of performance, which seems stupid. I can't believe nobody thought this through, this seems like a noob error by some local club organizing their first competition.

[@colemantrebor6574]

@@Mindcrawler23 Yeah I agree invidivual points from each category carrying over would be best, the problem is just that its incredibly hard to do that for speed in a way that rewards it the same as boulder and lead. Now that speed is separate im glad they switched to the 100 points systems

[@noone-ld7pt]

​@@colemantrebor6574 I mean it's not even that hard to do for speed. Just use the actual time's the athletes get, 100 being the world record and have 3-4 threshold times that gives more points per 10th saved. It's just the lead system using times instead of holds. And then have the athletes do like 3-4 runs with a swiss tournament based system so we still get to see the fastest athletes compete against each other. Instead we got the insanely stupid head to head knock out bracket, which might be one of the worst ideas in sports history. It literally ensures that if you're unlucky and get seeded against the fastest climber in the first round you can't get better than 5th place, regardless of whether you climb faster than every other athlete except the winner. And perhaps even worse; the polar opposite is also true, which actually happened to Ondra, if your opponent withdraws you immediately get 4th place regardless of whether or not you're the slowest in the entire field. The incompetence and ignorance that lead to this amount of horrible decisions in a single event is honestly staggering.

[@AlexanderLabial]

“Do Europeans gamble? Is gambling legal over there?” Got me laughing so hard 😂😂

[@threeheadedmango1234]

Cool idea for a video.

[@Voidload]

I would just personally LOVE to hear the athletes talk about what they think about this

[@ubuntujavier]

You should check how decathlon scores is calculated, because they have speed competition

[@agario5161]

Thank you our lord for another great video

[@djtrump4988]

Nice thumbnail, throw back to magnus's video

[@boogaloo4640]

Ludwig's video with Magnus

[@HidesEnd]

yoink and twisted ludwig's thumbnail LMAO nice

[@bioepi]

Thats olimpic rules in 2021. In Paris have other rules and maybe other gold medallist.

[@danielfantin3118]

oh so you were the one who stole the rear camera from my car

[@CliffdeZoete]

Had to double check if I'd put my contacts in...

[@Ja-fu5zw]

did you record the video with an iPhone 2G?

[@MrShakezpeare]

Your content is gold, man, can’t say it often enough! Witty, smart, creative…10/10!!!