To Practice or Not to Practice

Bern has been an amazing competition, 4 Olympic Pass, 2 New World Champions and a lot of emotions pouring into this event, we will always remember it as an epic one.

On the other side, due to the tetris like management of all the disciplines Speed, Lead, Boulder, Combined and Paraclimbing the organisation have taken the decision to separate the competition in 3 tranches.

The first one was the practice on the 9th of August in the afternoon, the 2nd one the Qualification round in the morning of the 10th and the Finals in the evening of the same day.

The practice round is usually just before the qualification round like this the athletes have the opportunity to both test the wall and make the tiny adjustments in their warm-up to be ready to perform at their best during the Qualification round.

Of course the warm-up has to be the best possible always, even because before the Finals the athletes doesn’t have the opportunity to do any other practice run.

But, if we think about the maximum performance that of course is what we want to see, the separation of these two rounds can mean a lot.

As we like to be very objective, we’ve calculated the average times of the qualification runs during all the 2023 season, and as you can see, other than the Girls in Salt Lake that have been quite disadvantaged by a very slippery wall, having the practice just before the qualification round can mean a lot in terms of best performance for the whole cohort of athletes.

Even because the World Championship is for sure the event in which the athletes are in the best shape of the year, and we should have seen some crazy times!

It hasn't gone really like that...

So as always, we want to listen to you all, should the practice be always before the qualification round, or is it just a moan for nothing?

Let us know it in the comments!