or, "why do people sandbag at climbing comps."

In this instance I am using the term "sandbag" to indicate that a person has entered a lower division at the competition than they should have. For example, the competitions that I have been in generally run Beginner, v0-v2, intermediate v3-v5, advanced, v6-v8, open v8-vsick. ish. we'll use those designations for the point of the discussion.

If you can regularly go out on a trip and bag a couple of v6's, I think I would consider that hard enough that you ought to be entering the "advanced" division, if the catagories are divided as listed above.

However, you are usually allowed one or two problems on your scorecard that are in the division above that which you entered before they bump you up. so if you can only do a "couple" of v6's, maybe you still belong in intermediate becuase that is *most* of what would appear on your score card?

I am curious to know what people's opinions are on this. If you were reasonably certain you could do several problems in the advanced catagory, would you enter it? or would you wait until you felt you could do MOSTLY problems from the advanced catagory before you entered it? What is your standard practice?

Important Note: Choose a category based on whether or not you could complete two previously unclimbed problems (in a given day) of that grade. That will likely put you into the appropriate category.

The Division You Belong In.

We should just go back to Gill's B1-B2-B3 system. There were two versions of this, if I remember correctly, so let's go with the simplest:

B1: The problem has been done by more than one person.
B2:: The problem has been done by one person, who has been able to repeat it only once.
B3: The problem has been done once, and even that person can't do it again.

I'd venture to say that everybody at a given comp would be in the B1 category.

Voila: problem solved.

Has anybody else noticed that there seems to be an extra lot of sand-bagging in the womens' categories? I think that this might be more pronounced in comps where the division recommendations for women are the same as for men (Beginner: v0-v2, intermediate: v3-v5, advanced: v6-v8, open v8+) ... most women who boulder v6+ will just go in the open category, those that boulder v3-v4 will go in the intermediate category, and there will be no-one in the advanced category. I like the comps where they space things out more evenly, or normalize the results by dividing things up into even quartiles. Neh?

Hmm, and if you were a v3-v5 climber and put yourself in the advanced category while the other female climbers bashfully declined, what would that be ... a reverse-sandbag?

if you sandbagged yourself you'd get screwed :D

That does seem like a pretty fair way to do things. It pushes you to climb hard. It discourages sandbagging. I say discourages rather than prevents because given enough ingenuity, someone could find a way to cheat it.

The only real flaw I see is that someone who has a bad day (and would have normally climbed in advancee or open), say sends only 2 V7s might wind up winning intermediate, depending on the point totals for the problems.

--BJ

I'm not a competition climber so dis me if you'd like. If you've got a real problem with sandbaggers you need to look at your reasons for competing. Do you want to win money and prizes? Or do you want to push yourself to the limit and improve your overall climbing as a result?

Only in America.

Only in America.

only in america what.


only in america we have a stupid thread about this? or only in america something else? if i'm missing something here i'd sure love to be told, directly.

If we still kept divisions, recognized winners of each division, but gave prizes to only the top finishers overall...

-m

The issue of gear prizes or cash prizes is also a touchy one, especially if you live in an area where there are pro or semi-pro climbers. Since they most likely already have some sort of sponsorship deal, free gear to them is of lesser or no value, whereas cash can pay for their gas to get there, entrance fee, dinner or the next trip out to J-Tree. I've been to comps where a guy won a certificate for a free pair of brand "X" shoes, which he promptly gave away to some random person, since he was already sponsored by brand "Y".

Consider the following situation: two climbers of almost equal skill attempt the exact same problems. They finish each problem in the same number of tries except for one problem, doesn't matter which. One climber falls one fewer times than the other. At the comps I go to, that's a 10 point difference. If by some wierd effect of chance, the division line is drawn between the two of them, the stronger climber loses. Considering they are both very similar in ability, that's not exactly fair.

And if 3 or 4 conniving individuals got to together, they could still maneuver themselves into whatever position they want.

The other option is the one used by several of my professors: look for the easy, obvious groups and call those Recreational, intermediate, advanced, but still have the open that you have to sign up for.

"i'm auctioning off one 5.10 shoe certificate. starting bid, 40 bucks. come find me, i'm wearing a blue shirt, and i'm CUTE."

indeed.

one suggestion i heard lately from a setter who does a lot of ABS and USAC comps was to just cap each catagory. like, say each rating was represented by a 100 point range [v4-400, ect] and the problems were rated somewhere in that range. and "intermediate" was v3-v5. [assume 10 high problems are scored]. somebody with greater than, say, 6000 points could not be in intermediate. 6000 pnts? congrats, you win first place. 6001? you are in advanced. this would allow for a solid spread of 5's, a 4 or two and maybe a 6, but it woudlnt be likely to pass 9 v5's and a v6, dig?

In the last comp I climbed in, just a week ago, I was having a tough time deciding whether or not to climb in the "Advanced" or "Open" categories. I eventually decided to climb in "Advanced", since there seemed to be about 6 or 7 problems that I didn't think I could do. Since I entered in the Advanced category, I ended up taking 2nd place. If I had entered Open, I would've taken 5th place.

Now, is it sandbagging that I entered Advanced? The person that won Advanced is a friend of mine, and none of us really feel like we'd be able to really compete in the "Open" category. But, if all of my friends join a local comp and sign up for "Advanced", chances are at least one of us is going to win that category. Does that count as sandbagging?

I think that once you win a division, then you should automatically be forbidden to compete at that level again, and should step it up to the next higher level. Of course, Open is an exception to this rule.

I belong in the Spectator division.

Clausti, instead of worrying about people dropping a division, climb so hard that you get blamed for it. That would be way hot.

I'm light.