Saturday, February 11, 2012

How-do-they-dare-to-call-this-a-worldcup pt. 2








Unbelievable. It's not even 12 yet and I'm already homesick (not homesick as in wanting to be in the Netherlands but homesick as wanting to be in our little van somewhere in the mountains away from all this shit).
I woke up at 23:00, 00:00, 01:00, 02:00... and finally again at 07:30. They kept on walking, talking and one girl got the brilliant idea to take a shower at 03:00 midnight. So I had a good nights rest.
I was in time in the isolation and was nervous but could work my mind to focus on other things. I imagined that the thing I was going to do was just another add-on boulder in Dennis bedroom-drytool-boulder-room: long moves, tricky holds and sure I could do it and just have fun.
I forgot my gloves and luckily the mens and women's semi's were at the same time so I could ask the men for a pair of fitting gloves (no way I could ever fit in the women's gloves...) Malcolm (UK/Denmark) had a spare pair for me (Thanks Malc).
The route preview was different from usual. The Russian suspected the Europeans to help each other with how-to-get-the-right-place-of-the-hold-with-your-axe-when-climbing. We suspected (are sure) the Russians shout hits to each other as we sometimes see them move, hear some Russians shouting and then they make the moves totally different but correct. Everyone complains about that so they came with a solve. Sort of.
They made pictures of every hold that would be in the route, stuck them up in the isolation so everyone could see the holds beforehand. One little problem with that was, that all pictures were black/white printed so quite vague and they were not printed as they were put in the route so you still would have advantage if your fellow Russian would shout up how to use the hold.
It was my turn to climb. I waited in the isolation tent, trying to stay warm. My warm up was good though, trying to simulate the climb, visualising it and warming up my shoulder muscles better then average for all the sideway holds in the route.
I climbed the ice, slamming my axes in as I didn't want to fall off there (as happened in the qualification). Then the holds. The first hold was flat and you had to move to an steinpull. I didn't want to fall off in the start so it took me some time before I decided to waist a bit of energy and time to make a figure-of-four. I moved up to the undercling/steinpull quite easily with that move and wanted to go on. Suddenly the judge said "Marianne stop climbing". I was confused, why stop, was it really the judge telling me to stop climbing of was someone in the audience just joking with me. She said it again. I turned around to look at if she meant it and then she said "go". So I thought it was a mistake and then she said again "stop climbing". I got angry as I didn't knew why I had to stop my attempt, what did I do wrong? She told me I used the edge of the structure. Really? Really? Did I really use the (forbidden) edge of the structure? If I did I would have noticed. But I was still not allowed to climb on. I jumped out of the hold and angry, confused, disappointed I stood on the ground again. I hadn't even clipped the first draw! I felt okay when I started, okay, better then really nervous, for the first time I felt okay and then this happens! Gordon, Malc and Dennis watched back the footage and it seems that my foot went under the structure when doing the fig4. I didn't notice that at all and if I would have touched it I would have noticed that for sure. My boots are quite soft and I'm always very conscious of my climbing.
I have the feeling they try to play really strict on the rules with me. I just heard that in the first comp in Korea they wanted to disqualify me (that was avoided by one of the judges), later I heard that they find that I complain too much about the rules and regulations. And, I know, if I'd would have been a Russian climber doing the same thing (if I really did that 'thing') she could just climb on.
I could put in an appeal/protest but why? They already made their decision, paying €100,- would just be a loss of and extra €100,- on to of the rest of all the costs. They're never going to change their mind anyway. (And here I actually wanted to add a lot of curse words)
Honestly, how could this happen, what happened?
I don't feel like I had the chance to show what I'm worth, actually, I now feel more like questioning 'am I worth anything?'.
I feel angry, confused and quite useless right now. What the f*** am I doing in here?!

Oh, yes, yesterday Dennis and I both climbed speed. Dennis was again the best non-Russian, me one of the last in the result list. As usual. But I climbed extra slow and didn't fall off so I got full four climbing attempts. Better then last year (where I had just 1/4 climb)...

Pictures: Dennis' speed attempt and how far/low I got in the semi's...

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