Battle in The Bubble – Men’s Final 5 – Technique Thoughts
Obviously, Men’s Final 5 had to be a really hard problem. The bulk of the problem was set by Jonny Hork, who took one look at the big purple Climb-It tufa and set to work screwing it on the steepest part of the roof.
The ladder was sketchy (flimsy aluminum on wet plastic) so Jon decided to help Jonny out a bit. Anyways, with a bit of input from the rest of the team and a lot of his own ideas, Jonny put up what turned out to be a spectacular final problem. One of the most interesting things about it is that, after a few tries, both Daniel and Julian were getting high on the problem, but Daniel was besting Julian by two moves (even before he stuck the final hold in the dramatic finish). Here are some pictures I took of their last tries, cause it’s interesting to see what’s different:
Julian
It looked like Julian tried as hard as he could to reach that left hand, and he couldn’t quite get it well enough, so he fell off. That Halo he’s matched in is kinda slopey, and it’s pretty impressive that he did the movement the way he did. Let’s see how Daniel did it differently:
Daniel
On his first two tries, Daniel did these same moves, but he seemed to be barely hanging on. Before this try he had a 2 minute rest, and it showed. In this sequence he is much stronger, and locked off much higher on his left hand and right heel, so the move to the high right hand isn’t so stretched out this time. Also, his foot cut isn’t quite as dramatic as the one you saw in this post: Battle in The Bubble Goes Off HUGE!!! This go, his last, he easily got his feet back on, hucked sideways for the finish hold, and somehow, magically, stuck it. The crowd went absolutely wild, competitors rushed the mats to hug Daniel, and everybody had huge grins on their faces. It was a fantastic ending to a great event.