Now, first of all, a prize to anyone who can figure out what is going on in the rules. There seem to be rounds, normalized scoring, equal points on problems no matter how hard they are, and all sorts of bizarre things going on that wouldn't make sense if you took them at face value. Even includes sentences like this:
Junior & Open are open to anyone under 16 on the day of the first event. The open has no age restrictions.
So who knows what to make of that.
The one thing that I did pick up out of the rules was this:
The top 5 scores from the male open event will be entered into the famous SIBL head to head to battle out for glory.
For heaven's sake. So no finals for girls. Who decided that?
I suppose, to be completely honest, I do not see nearly as many strong girl climbers in England as I do in the US, even though there are surprisingly many strong boys considering what the climbing in England has to offer (different rant, different rant...). For example, three and a half years ago, at the BUSA bouldering comp, I came in about 10th for the girls, out of around 70 girls. Eddie-from-Oxford came in about 10th for the boys, out of not-that-many-more boys, maybe around 100. But here's the thing. Eddie is one of the best climbers in Ireland. He's put up hard FAs. He's repeated hard E-graded things that haven't seen many ascents. At the time, I climbed about V2 (probably still do).
In an American comp where someone like Eddie came in 10th for the boys, there would be very strong girls coming in 10th for the girls. Not me, sadly. (The winning bouldering girls would all be about 4'11" ... different rant, different rant.) England just doesn't have that many strong female climbers, and I don't know why. It takes someone like Lisa Rands to come over and show them how it's done.
What I do know, though, is that it is unacceptable for major, real bouldering comps in England to not have a finals for the girls. Maybe if they were treated more equally we'd see more girls climbing harder to get a chance to be in finals. No wonder Claire Murphy left for America.
7 comments:
I believe this site has a 1 rant per post quota - you have exceedfed your yearly limit.
how *very* sexist of them...ah, when will those silly brits learn? they do have such charming accents though.
That was a good rant of mine.
I don't understand the problem with the open/junior category? you have to be under 16 to be a junior, but ANYONE can be in the open category. ages 0 - 200. so a 15 year old, say, could climb in EITHER category. got it?
Right, I know what they're TRYING to say, but the problem is that the way they said it isn't really clear. From the first sentence, I would have gotten rid of "& open" and changed "are" to "is." Then it would be much more clearly worded.
oh look, you do answer on your blog! you should send emails. I'm glad that you understood what they were trying to say though.
The problem is with the wording of the rules, which isn't great. I wouldn't agree with what you say about it being sexist - the rules written up are again mistaken, or outdated. What they do now is that they put the top 5 scorers in all of the categories into a head to head together. Admittedly having junior girls competing against male open climbers seems slightly unfair.
That the standad of girls climbing is low is now completely untrue since one of the junior girls is the youngest ever woman to have done an 8a. (Kitty Wallace - look it up)
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