World Youth Climbing Championships II

Second visit to the EICA at Ratho for the semi-finals of the lead climbing on the climbing walls. Finding out more about the way the competition works too. The climbers are kept in isolation and not allowed to see the routes up the walls until the set time when there is an approaching chatter and the crowd of competitors rush into the arena for their carefully timed opportunity to look at the routes that will face them. The floor of the arena is filled with climbers looking up at the walls and working out what moves they will need to do on their way up as high as possible. All too soon they are all herded out again and kept in isolation until it is their turn to climb. To keep things right, no one is allowed to leave the arena and then come back in again. On the way in they stamped your wrist and presumably they would have checked if you went out and tried to get back in. And the commentators weren't supposed to make any comments about how people were doing in case it gave an unfair advantage to later competitors. With the climbers starting in order of their performances in the qualifying heats, it was generally the later climbers who got higher and higher up the wall, and at last a few started to top out. The commentators were then in danger of breaking the information embargo as they got carried away in their enthusiasm to praise "a great climb" (aka "reaching the top of the wall"). Anyway this shot was back during the hectic moments of the observation with the two British junior women who had qualified for the semi-final, Catherine Whiteman and Natalie Berry, looking at the route up the wall. Catherine finished 27th, while Natalie managed to finish 10th and therefore narrowly missed out on a place in the final for the top eight.