2 weeks ago, a couple of our budding climbers went along to test their skills at the 4th Indonesia Open X-sports Championships in Palembang. Felicia Lim, Judith Sim, Janice Ng and Zhang Bin Bin, Adriel Choo and Jonathan Hwa took part in Boulder and Speed Track, and Xu Liting in Boulder only. Competitors hailed from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and even India! The attraction was perhaps the prize money of 25 million rupiah (>3000 SGD). Intrigued, I caught some of them up on Facebook to hear what they had to say.
From the left: Felicia, Adriel, Janice, Jonathan, Liting, Bin Bin and Judith
The competition walls
Liting who tied with Indonesians Siti Robiah and Uji Ayu for 1st place at the boulder qualifiers and finished 4th described the routes as very different from the Singapore style. Judith shared similar sentiment, describing the routes as different and difficult to read.
Liting amongst the finalists
Says Liting,
The style of routes at IOXC were pretty different from what we are used to in Singapore. The qualifying routes were roughly of the same difficulty, perhaps harder in the sense that they are more frontal and powerful, in comparison to our more technical routes. The finals, however, were significantly harder, and the Indonesians’ immense static strength and frontal power really shone through.
1st and 2nd place went to Anitama and Harini respectively. Both of them were at Boulderactive this year, and Harini told me they found the routes very hard, and were not able to qualify for the finals. Perhaps it was for the same reasons that we found the IOXC routes more challenging?
Felicia shares that
…the routes were not crazy hard, i was half expecting them to be. I think all of us can do the routes with not much problem, but like what the rest said, having the right beta and route reading was crucial so we don’t waste our attempts. But i personally didn’t think the routes were powerful except maybe the endings. Most moves could be done statically? but then again maybe because i am a little taller, so i don’t jump a lot. But yea, the style at the IOXC was different from singapore style. Tiles were old school! Now we have “upgraded” to the american tiles with different type of friction already.haha. but i didn’t think it was much of an issue, like what adriel said, the tiles looked bad to hold, but were actually pretty ok.
Meanwhile our speedsters worked hard to scale the yellow ladder Speed Track they were facing for the 1st time. Adriel achieved a personal best timing of 7.842 sec which placed him 9th out of 21 participants. Our little speed monsters Janice, Judith and Bin Bin were not far off at 11.38sec, 11.39sec and 12.02sec respectively.
Judith looking thoughtful
Adriel preparing to take off
Adriel:
It was definitely a good first time experience on the speed track for the whole team and to know our standing amongst the others in the region.
The speed track rungs are similar to shallow, sloper jugs that threaten to throw you off if you go above a certain height. The rungs simply run all the way to the top where the “buzzer” is located.
With regards to speed techniques, I personally feel that the ladder technique commonly used for classic formats is almost incomparable to the double dyno technique used for the track. Though it is more tiring, it is the most efficient way. Your knees would take a beating if the ladder technique was carelessly used.
Nonetheless, the Indonesians are really fast and SEA Games will definitely stage a tough fight without the speed track to practice on. On that note, we’ll just have to train harder to make up for lost wall time.
The speed rungs
Janice recounts her experience…
This is the first time that we join IOXC competition and all we had was just one day of trying out the speed track. However I still feel that my team did well for it within such a short time frame of training at Indonesia. I’m proud of them and Adriel had reached the personal best timing 7.842sec and 11.38sec for myself:)
For my climb during the knock out round, i felt disappointed regard my opponent to made a fault start on the second climb.
Fault start usually happens during the start of the climb where climber leave the sensor when the command was not fully out yet… so that was what happen and when such things happen, both climbers were suppose to end the climb and start back at the starting point.
However I was too focus with the climb I couldn’t hear people shouting for me to stop. So what I did was just continue with my climb till I nearly reach the top before I realised I was suppose to end it. This cause me to waste quite a lot of my energy. So I didn’t do well in my third climb
However overall for this competition it is still a fruitful experience before the sea games that is held by Indonesia as they also have such category…
Lets not forget our ever feisty Malayaporean Jon who leaves us with the 4 words which perhaps best describes the amazing effort our climbers went through,
Ass pain, kena kick
Results (click to enlarge):
Female Boulder Finals
Female Speed Finals
Male Speed Finals
