Despite the blizzards, we made it to Amersham in good time as usual. Three year sevens; all keen but perhaps a little apprehensive, had made the journey to participate in their first independent competition. Sadly, Daniel Shepperson was still unable to compete despite his cast being removed. Joe Cook opted out of this round too.

The usual inspection of the competition problems commenced. As is always the case at Amersham's tiny wall, there were some rather contrived climbs with very little space left for warming up. Twice I had to speak to other juniors who were getting dangerously close to using holds on their comp problems.

Mark "Zippy" Pretty had, again, done a good job setting some quality challenges in both the open and the junior category. For this round, he had a little helper: Tyler Landman had set one of the junior problems. This was both a good thing and a bad thing:
Good because the problem was seriously hard and, for a change, really tested our strongest climbers.
Bad because, having set it, Tyler was not allowed to climb it thus effectively taking him out of the running for top place at this round. Tyler is one of the few junior climbers who is genuine competition for the likes of Tony Musselbrook, Matt Cousins, Joel Charley and Callum Harris.

In the adults Tom Gore had another bad day finishing well down the field. Russell Bates, on the other hand, continued to perform well finishing only one point behind Tom.

Our newcomers had a great day. Not that their scores were fantastic but they enjoy the friendly atmosphere of the SIBL and received plenty of encouragement from their more experienced fellow climbers.

Our regulars in the junior category did very well indeed. Six in the top ten with Tony, Matt and Joel making first, second and third.

We will enter the final round at the Westway on 14 March with the same six in the top ten places overall. Tony has a 15 point lead over Tyler and Joel is just six points behind Tyler.
Despite his frustrating performance at Amersham, Tom Gore is joint fourth overall and set for a battle with the mighty Greg Karolak for third place.
Should be an exciting 'final'.

Results | Gallery