Varsity Climbing: UCL beats KCL in first ever competition
Photography by Felicia Hu
UCL 1371 - 941 KCL. Felicia Hu reports on UCL’s win at the Climbing and Mountaineering Varsity competition.
On Friday 6th March the UCL Climbing and Mountaineering Club (UCLCMC) went head to head against the King’s College London Mountaineering Club (KCLMC) in order to win the first ever Climbing and Mountaineering Varsity title. 2020 is a big year for indoor climbing with the sport debuting at both Varsity and at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo later this year.
This year’s Climbing and Mountaineering Varsity competition featured bouldering exclusively. Bouldering is a discipline in which athletes climb up short walls with no rope. However, each move is more technically and physically demanding than ones you would find on a roped route of a similar difficulty. Bouldering requires sharp problem-solving skills as well as a high degree of physical strength.
This year’s competition featured 20 unique boulder problems on the competition wall at Yonder, a bouldering gym. The problems will remain there for another four weeks. 18 climbers from UCL and 10 from KCL had three hours to attempt 18 of these, with two being reserved for the men and women’s finals.
If a competitor reached the top on the first try (known as “flashing”) they were rewarded with 10 points. Reaching the top on the second try earned them 7 points, and three tries was awarded with five points. If a climber took four or more tries to complete the problem they were given two points. Each problem also featured a hold roughly halfway up marked “Zone” - if a competitor reached the zone, they were awarded one point. At the end of the 3 hours, the points were tallied up and the top three men and women overall progressed to finals, during which they could compete for additional points.
Four climbers from UCL and two from KCL competed in the finals. From UCL we had Imi Bagnall-Smith, on 140 points after qualifiers, Aidan Roberts on 190, Nicolas Rosal on 138, and Martha Tin on 104. Bagnall-Smith, the team captain, flashed the women’s final. Roberts, a team GB climber, flashed the men’s final. Rosal unfortunately did not manage to complete the men’s final. Tin completed the women’s final on the second try.
The KCL climbers did less well. Dan Bautista, who finished the qualifiers on 154 points, attempted the men’s problem and got further than Rosal did but did not complete it ultimately. Gillian McNaughton entered the finals on 104 points and tried the women’s problem several times but did not manage to finish it either.
Thus, after four hours of climbing hard and bonding on the mats, UCL emerged victorious over KCL, finishing on 1371 points against their 941 points.
Team captain Bagnall-Smith had this to say on UCL’s victory: “Psyched that UCL took the win against King’s in the first ever Varsity climbing match! Looking forward to two in a row next year...”