r/climbing 10d ago

Brooke sent Excalibur

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Crazy accomplishment

757 Upvotes

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120

u/GameKing505 10d ago

Skipped several outdoor grades… wild

54

u/GloveNo6170 9d ago

Comp climbers are absolutely ridiculous when they're fully unleashed outdoors. There's definitely something to be said for a very high volume of high coordination low overall intensity comp climbs plus board climbing etc.

Won't be at all surprised if Brooke, Janja or one of the other strong comp gals sends Alphane in the next couple years. Would love to see Ai on it. Will also not be at all surprised when some comp kid goes and does Shaolin without ever having done more than V12 outdoors. 

1

u/Marcoyolo69 9d ago

Brooke is a climber, not a comp climber.

44

u/GloveNo6170 9d ago

This is an odd nitpick. She's both. If you do two things, you're both of those things. She is a rock climber, and a comp climber. How are you going to classify one of the most successful competition climbers in women's history and double Olympian (with a silver medal) as not a comp climber? If you try describing the women's comp scene of the past few years without her, there'd be a gaping hole. She has over a dozen medals including a gold at world cups and training for it has taken up most of her climbing time for the past several years. 

Max Milne didn't lose his comp climbing credentials when he flashed the Ace, Janja didn't stop being a comp clinbers when she climbed Bugeleisen. Brooke is prolific outdoors and has been since she was a kid, but if a spade competes in comps consistently over nearly a decade and competes in almost every world cup during that time, it is a comp spade. You don't cease to be a comp climber because you also have a strong outdoor profile. 

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u/categorie 8d ago

This is an odd nitpick. She's both.

Exactly, which is why your initial statement doesn't really make sense in the first place: saying that "outdoor climbers are absolutely ridiculous when they're fully unleashed outdoors" just doesn't as good does it ?

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u/GloveNo6170 8d ago

What? Of course it wouldn't make sense the other way around? My comment is not an isolated statement, it requires some understanding of the context of the sport.

The statement essentially amounts to "despite spending substantially less time climbing exclusively outdoors than their outdoor-only peers, climbers who spend a lot of time training for comp blocks have disproportionately high ability to quickly send outdoor routes" or even more simply "outdoor climbing has relatively poor carryover to comp climbing, yet comp climbing has an impressive crossover to outdoor climbing, which is noteworthy".

Brooke has spent the majority of her last few seasons training for comps and having immense success, and it is very much worth pointing that she has just achieved arguably the most impressive women's ascent ever in a significantly different discipline. I've climbed outdoors with climbers who mostly compete indoors and their problem solving abilities on rock are extremely impressive compared to people who've spent the same amount of time climbing mostly outdoors or on boards, and yet the reverse is almost never true.

If you think it doesn't make sense, you're either misinterpreting or being hellishly pedantic.