My feeling is that YES the rules of the Tour are available to competitors and it is his or her responsiblilty to become familiar with them. At the same time it`s a shame the competitor has to be on the look out for judging mistakes through out the finals. Sure humans and volunteers make mistake but if ther were consequences for a head judge for his or her mistakes them perhaps a level of professionalism would follow.
Competitors should be able to concentrate on climbing and judges need to recognize mistakes and correct them. Or not make mistakes.
I agree with you Dan.

well put Dan.  and for what it’s worth, i’m inclined to agree on all accounts.

(and i’m completely unbiased because i wasn’t there, and i have no idea who he’s talking about…)

pete woods.

I have written this post to alert the competitive climbing community of the urgent need for a change in the current rules of the Tour de Bloc and the CEC. As they stand, they have failed to protect climbers therefore violating their fundamental purpose.

In a recent competition a judge made an error in writing down a climber’s score in the finals.  This error cost the climber two places in the standings.  The competition was extremely close and all of the climber’s high points concrete thus causing no reason for suspicion and consequently the error was not caught until the following day by the organizing party.  The climber was informed of this mistake and after confirming it, immediately filed an appeal to have the standings changed and points awarded accordingly to the true placing.  However, upon filing the appeal the climber was informed that an appeal could only be filed within 15 minutes of the results being released.  The appeal was therefore overturned and the climber was not awarded the points for their true placing due to a technicality.

A second appeal was filed arguing a number of points such as the Rulebook not being posted on the Tour de Bloc website, the competitors not being informed of 15-minute appeal time, that the points were not written on the hold tape, and that there was no access to the route maps for competitors to see what the points per hold were.  As there was no access to the route maps the climber had to trust that the judge had written down the correct score, and could not independently verify their accuracy.  Should the scores have been questioned, one would not have been able to check the points that should have been given because the points were not available.  Again this appeal was turned down based on the same argument of the 15-minute time limit and that “the Head Judges decision is final.”

This controversy brought to my attention a flaw in the rules that the Tour de Bloc and CEC are failing to recognize and rectify.  As such I am starting a petition for the Tour de Bloc and CEC to add two new rules to the Rulebook to rectify the situation, and protect competitors in the future.

The addition of the first rule would allow for the competition organizer to rectify any mistakes made and discovered within 24 hours of the conclusion of the competition.  The pressure placed upon organizers to announce results as quickly as possible can lead to errors being made or overlooked.  This does not mean that the competition organizers will feel free to take their time and neglect accuracy before they announce the results, but in a case such as the one mentioned above it will allow for the organizer to realize a mistake and fix it.  This will also ensure standings from the competition are completely accurate, which is important when a ranking system is in place; no competitor wants to know that they did not rightfully earn the points that they were given.  Finally, it means that competitors can focus solely on climbing and not be forced to scrutinize every single call that a judge makes.

The second rule I suggest is an appeal process that goes to an appeals council, not including the Head Judge.  In the current ruling there is no objective party to protect the climber should the head judge be biased with regards to any aspect of the competition.  In the majority of organized sports there is a secondary appeals process that allows a time period typically up to a month following a competition for an appeal to be filed in cases where a disagreement with the scoring, judging, or standings can not be settled immediately following a competition, or, should an error be discovered later than the 15-minute time-limit.  This will allow the competitor to bring their position in front of a council that is totally objective, and holds no bias towards the competition or competitor. 

Climbing is a fast growing and evolving sport, and situations such as the one above illustrate that there are still improvements to make to the rules and regulations to better protect the competitor, and maintain the integrity of the competition.  The purpose of these rules and regulations is, after all, to provide the competitor with the opportunity to be treated fairly so that they can focus on their climbing and not have to worry about the judging or calculation of scores. Additionally, including rules regularly accepted in other officially organized sports will further climbing’s place as a major sport.

If you support my position I ask you to leave a reply indicating your support of this petition.  It takes more than one individual to bring awareness of a need for change and with the communities support positive changes can be accomplished.

Sincerely,
D

-Note: The Tour de Bloc has still not posted a Competitors Rulebook on it’s website.

Several thoughts for all on this - you stated that you appealed based on the following points:

1. as the Rulebook not being posted on the Tour de Bloc website
2. the competitors not being informed of 15-minute appeal time
3. that the points were not written on the hold tape
4. and that there was no access to the route maps for competitors to see what the points per hold were.

My thought are this, in the same order:

1. The rules are indeed posted on the TDB website. Here’s the link:

http://www.tourdebloc.com/resources__files/TDB_JudgesHandbook.pdf

• Next up is the question: is it the responsibility of the competitor to know the rules? I would say that it is. If the person did not know that there was a 15 minute window for an appeal, who’s fault is that? Should the head judge read out all the rules before each comp? No - we as competitors should know the rules. See previous post.
• This makes sense in some ways, but not in others. While providing clarity to the judging process, it also eliminates the ability of a route setter to try and make a difficult-to-read problem. If I see a problem where I can’t read how to send it - and there are numbers on the tape, all of a sudden the sequence is being told to me.
• I feel this is the most accurate point you made - if, once the climb is completed, the judge and the competitor briefly discuss what the score on the problem was, disagreements can be quickly and easily rectified.

Looking at the rule changes you proposed, I’m not certain I agree with them.

24 hour rule - I do not believe that an error can be solved 24 hours after a competition. All of the judges have left, the competitors have returned to whichever city they came from, and getting people back together to discuss the discrepancy would be very very difficult. While I feel that there is room for improvement on the process, 24 hours for appeals would be unfeasible. As competitive climbers, we will always have to rely on the judge making the right call. But they are also human and mistakes happen. So as competitive climbers, we will always have to know the rules, and be prepared to challenge the results if we disagree. World Championships have a 20 minute appeal. If it works for the World Cup, you’d think we could make it work as well.

Appeals Council -

Interesting thought. I like the idea - but who would you get to be on this? Remember, we are a volunteer based crew. We run on the goodwill of people donating their time to run/organise/set/judge at all of these events. Who’s time are you volunteering? Additionally, without video replay facilities, any appeal would simply become a he-said/she-said debacle without any means of resolution. So now are you talking about having official video taping of every competition? There were 8 problems at the TBD where this happened. 8 cameras required, and more volunteers to run them. While we have done this at Junior Nationals for years, even then they are not infallible as the climbers body, or a feature of the wall, can obscure the disputed incident.

I understand the frustration of an incorrect result, especially one discovered long after the fact. There does indeed need to be a process put in place where the climbers can see the scorecards after the results are posted, so that they can determine if they were correct or incorrect. If I had to guess, had the results to be posted in a clear manner which showed exactly where each climber got on each problem, the mistake would have been picked up immediately by the climber. Then the 15 minute-rule would have sufficed.

So, Dan, while I agree the process is faulty, I think that a much simpler solution is available in two parts:

1. Post the results clearly with the breakdown of the scores so the competitors can double check immediately.
2. The climbers should know the rules.

Dan,

I agree that it is unfortunate the competitor was not awarded the points he/she deserved; however, if your goal is to better protect the competitor I think there are much larger issues with the TDB and CEC that should be addressed.

During qualification for this competition there were no judges deciding the completion of problems (or proper starts).  From what I witnessed there were also some non-completions (hand out of finish tape) and jump starts that were being signed as completions.  Whether this was caused by a lack of knowledge of the rules or a blatant disregard for them is irrelevant.  These issues should be the discussion as they determine whether competitors even have a chance for obtaining points and competing in finals.  There will always be judging issues but this issue affects the integrity of the entire competition.   I understand these competitions are run by volunteers and it can be a challenge to find enough but judges for all problems are not required.  Judges for the top 10 problems will ensure a fair finals as these problems will most likely determine who makes finals anyway.

The second issue I see to a balanced tour is the Atlantic division.  These two local competitions and one regional provide Atlantic competitors with the same amount of points as the other divisions.  These competitions provide national team points when I believe there were 12 open men and 3 open women at the last competition.  These points that are awarded play a much larger factor in determining final standing than a judging error.  Unfortunately I’m unsure of how to correct this problem as people in the Atlantic provinces should have the opportunity to compete as well.

I feel competition climbing in Canada has a bit of an identity crisis.  These competitions need to decide if they are real competitions designed for people trying to compete seriously (perhaps with the goal of making the national team) or a fun event designed to attract as many people as possible.  Nationals is a perfect example of a real competition, zone format, everyone climbs the same problems with the same amount of time.  Friendly format competitions with competitors signing their own scorecards are always going to have larger issues in addition to the problem of judging mistakes.  Often these dual comps don’t serve either type of competitor well.  People at a serious competition want the rules strictly enforced and applied to all competitors; someone at a fun comp might not understand why some guy is freaking out because both of their hands weren’t in a taped box.

I feel solving these issues will go further to ensuring a fair and balanced competition circuit than an unfortunate judging error.  I don’t mean to trivialize the issue of an incorrect placing as I would want the points if I earned them but there are much larger competition issues that should be addressed first.  Ideally it would great to have all issues solved but with limited resources priorities should be set.

Finally I don’t want to give the impression I’m opposed to the CEC or the TDB.  I’m extremely thankful to both Luigi and Chris (and all the others, gym owners, setters, volunteers etc) for all their hard work and dedication.  I try to make every competition I can as I understand the time and commitment required to host one and I’m just hoping my two cents might help improve the process.

Mark aka Silver