Team Geared Up

I was going to write up a brief entry on this myself considering I was doing the route-setting for the roped part of the competition but Stephen McGowan and Ailish Grennan put together a top quality write-up so I’ll leave it to them! Consider this my first arrangement of a guest post :) From my own point of view, great to hear that everyone enjoyed my few routes - I tried to make them as interesting as possible. Apologies to all the females however, I know I (unintentionally) stumped quite a few of you with a reach move on one of the lead routes. 12 hours doing the setting and I still missed it….Ooops! :) - Neal :)

DUBLIN, IRELAND (Team Geared Up) - Last weekend saw an invasion, not from those Welsh rugger types, but in the form of 100+ climbers who descended on Dublin for the Irish Climbing Intervarsities. This year the competition was hosted by DCU, with the bouldering element taking place at their college wall and the leading section in Westwood Sports Centre in Clontarf.

The route setters certainly made things interesting for the first day by putting together some tough problems. The competition followed the format of the Irish Bouldering League but one problem broke from this by allowing as many tries as the competitors desired. This longer problem proved very popular, only seeing one clean ascent on the easier beginners version and another close miss on the advanced version. The day ended with good point separation between the females and with the points very close for the males with the leaders in Male A, Female A, Male B and Female B being John Orr, Joan Mulloy, Jason Slevin and Deirdre Cormican respectively.

The leading competition started a bit behind schedule, partly due to everyone feeling a little ropey (yes I did just say that!) after the mandatory night out in the Turks Head the night before. John Orr started the second day off with an impressive clean ascent of what turned out to be the hardest route for the day, a feat no one else would manage to achieve. Jane Gallwey missed the first day but after a great performance on her two leads pulled herself up into 3rd place in Female A. The four routes for the day were enjoyed by all, with many people eager for a second try once the competition finished. The two advanced categories top three were left with comfortable leads once the final scores were added up, with the beginners categories still being close.

After the first day QUBC were ahead in the overall club scores and on the second day they managed to slightly increase their lead to win the Irish Climbing Intervasities for the second year running. They received the first prize of a boulder mat along with the trophy/gravestone which I’m sure they’ll enjoy having to carry back up to Belfast, although there was some complaints from the members that had to carry it down on Friday.

Overall the competition was a success and everyone seems to have enjoyed themselves. We’re all looking forward to next year in Limerick! Of course none of this would have been possible without our sponsors Berghaus, Patagonia, Specsavers, Great Outdoors, 53 Degrees North and Brennan’s Bread. We would also like to thank all our route setters and our volunteers from Westwood Fitness Club who put in a lot of their own time to make this competition possible.

Of course no report would be complete without the results so I’ve added them below. The complete results are available here.
For anyone who was involved and wants to get involved in a discussion on the event, don’t forget TGU boards, or else hit the forum on said topic on climbing.ie!

• Male A - 1. John Orr (QUBC), Damien O’Sullivan (TCD), 3. Richie Sandes (DIT)
• Female A - 1. Joan Molloy (NUIG), 2. Mary Moloney (GMIT Castlebar), 3. Jane Gallwey (TCD)
• Male B - 1. Jason Slevin (QUBC), 2. Colm Shannon (UL), 3. Owen Largey (QUBC)
• Female B - 1. Deirdre Cormican (GMIT), 2. Jade O’Mahony (NUIG), 3.Barbara Bracko (DCU)”

- Stephen McGowan & Ailish Grennan -

(Image Credit: Jonathon Mullen & Nicole Quinn)