A Real Life Off-By-One Error

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2024-09-01 22:00:03

The Championnats d’Europe d’Escalade (climbing) in Villars-sur-Ollon has just finished. I couldn’t make it to all the events, but did see the finals of the “Speed” event. It’s a series of head-to-head elimination races up a 15m tall wall, resulting in an eventual victor after enough rounds.

Speed climbing is a bit like skateboarding at the Olympics: absolutely in no way a real representation of what it’s like to do it for 99.99% of people who skate/climb, and apparently it’s scoffed at by most of the community; but it’s entertaining nonetheless to the layman, and brings spectators in so why not include it?

I have a surface level knowledge of the competition, informed only by the fact that it has happened in the village for the last few years. I know that the route in speed climbing is always the same, to allow comparisons of timings across the years. There’s probably a number of other factors that can’t be controlled, like is the fact Villars is at 1,200m above sea level enough to make a difference? But anyway, they control the ones they can.

The competition started and got through a number of rounds. There were some comments about how the climber on the left always won. I thought maybe the stronger (according to previous results?) climber was assigned the left lane. Maybe there’s some psychology there if you see the left climber always winning and then you’re up next, on the right?