The ESPN Asian X-games are the biggest televised climbing competition on the planet. That’s not hyperbole, that’s fact (TV viewership of 154 million households).

This years event in Shanghai, China featured speed bouldering and speed climbing which is loved by TV audiences and loathed by “real” climbers everywhere. No matter what your take on speed climbing is or if TV comps are legit, it’s hard to ignore that speed is taking competitive climbing to the largest possible audience.

Routesetter.com caught up with Timy Fairfield who has been the Chief setter for the Asian X-games for the last five years. He tells us about TV comps, X-games format and many, many epics. You can find out more about Timy at his website timyfairfield.com.

Were you the only setter? Any local setters there?

TF: This year I worked with 2 other Americans. Brandi Proffitt, currently the only American woman routesetting international bouldering events and was the head women’s routesetter/forerunner. She has set this event twice previously in Malaysia and Korea as well as the Ford Adventure Sport Challenge in Beaver Creek, CO. She was a tremendous help as a gauge for the women and even collaborated on the men’s finals. We also brought an inexperienced American assistant, Marc Beverly, who having competed in and served as assistant routesetter at the Ouray Ice Fest, wanted to learn from gymnastic bouldering events to influence his endeavors as a mixed-ice climbing routesetter.

No local routesetters were utilized. The model for TV production level routesetting is different than that traditionally implemented for setting events in commercial gyms and amateur American events in general. In previous years in Malaysia we had assistants, who although we eventually encouraged and taught to route set for this event, were not relied upon to produce content for the show.

Television production does not want to leave the quality or execution of the work up to unknown entities. To insure delivering a satisfactory product to their sponsors, they pre-plan and control every aspect of the project and hire reliable, experienced professionals to guarantee success.

Although I strongly believe in developing and mentoring routesetters, TV production executives view excess implementation of such tactics on the job as amateur.

ESPN changed the format from straight-up bouldering to speed bouldering. In your opinion why did they do this?

TF: Experimentation and change are crucial to the evolution of the entertainment value of the competitive disciplines of our sport. ESPN wanted a format that would provide an instant and obvious comparison between the performances of the competitors that could be easily conveyed to the television viewing audience. Television production has had success with formats in which time and head- to-head competition play a significant role. For the television audience ESPN coined the name “Flash Bouldering” (which had nothing to do with what we refer to as “flashing” in our sport). A more accurate definition would be an “after-work-duel-time-pressure-speed- bouldering”. But as you may imagine, such a definition is too arduous and ambiguous for a non-climbing viewing audience.

How many problems did you have to set?

TF: For the roped speed climbing event, we created a pair of identical 20 move 15 meter speed routes which remained the same for the duration of the event from practice and seeding qualification rounds through the bracketed single-elimination final round of 16.

For the bouldering event we created 4 pairs of identical routes (women’s and men’s qualifiers, women’s and men’s finals) – the difficulties of which were modified during the after-work session to insure an exciting show.

We also had the option of adding a “surprise” on-site section to either the start or finish of the problems while the competitors were isolated before their final attempts.

Note: the routesetting of these sections had been pre-choreographed and forerun before the event – we didn’t just improvise on the spot. This was executed at the request of ESPN TV Production Staff. Although very unconventional, this non-linear approach to formatting proved to yield a very exciting event. It is also an important lesson to us that those from outside of our sport (eg. Sponsors and television production) may actually have some constructive ideas worth testing.

I heard you had customs issues with your holds. Does this happen a lot? How did it turn out?

TF: This has not been an issue in the past when we have set the event in Thailand, Malaysia or Korea. However, the Chinese customs is very particular about everything that enters their country. They only want our money, not our goods. They want to export, not import so they’re very fussy about the inclusion of packing slips that are neurotically detailed down to every last widget, screw, block of chalk and roll of tape.

Unfortunately, we did not receive all 20 boxes of North American holds that I had included in the shipment so I was not able to set with all of the holds that I had ordered from the companies that support my routesetting endeavors. Although everything was on the same air-bill, some of the holds showed up the day of the event and some never showed up at all. Luckily all of our equipment, tools and supplies made it safely. We will use all of the holds at next year’s event.

Any other epic’s you can tell us about?

TF: Yeh, plenty of them. As every routesetter knows, the ability to effectively manage epics while maintaining harmony determines the quality of your end product.

Epic #1: Initially, we had no local routesetters, assistants, volunteers or speed belayers as we normally do in less rigid countries such as Malaysia. The reasons ranged from cultural differences with regard to how business must be conducted and language barriers to pride to downright stubbornness of the CMA (Chinese Mountaineering Association) who demanded from ESPN to be in charge of organizing the whole event. Obviously, they don’t understand the concept of free enterprise when it comes to pulling off a climbing event for television. It was pretty hilarious.

The CMA had never even heard of Jim Waugh whose company, Waugh Worldwide Productions, has been the exclusive sport organizer for climbing with ESPN for 12 years. This would have been potentially disastrous for ESPN even though they would never consider such a thing. TV isn’t interested in non-scripted drama behind the scenes – only drama by design.

As a result of ESPN not recognizing them as a viable sport organizer, the Chinese threatened to boycott the event, disallowing any of their athletes from competing, their climbers from volunteering or offering to share any resources. We called their bluff by saying: “OK, watch as the Japanese, Korean’s, Filipino, Hong Kong, Malaysian, Indonesian and especially Taiwanese (who are referred to as “Chinese Taipei” and disallowed by IOC rules from wearing their Taiwanese flags in sporting events) to come in and run game on your turf – Yeh, explain that to the mayor of Shanghai as she spectates.

They came through in the end and brought their national team, belayers and even offered us their timing devices for speed and duel bouldering. That was the easy epic.

Timy goes on to recount six more “epics” that include: identical T-nut placements, crusty geo volumes, red paint, race cars, sponsor logos, zealous Chinese customs, trading team jerseys and Thai labor.

Did the event go off well? Were you happy about it? Was ESPN happy about it?

TF: Despite all the epics, we were pleased with the fruits of our labor. The athletes were psyched, the spectators were amped and most importantly the client, ESPN/STAR Sports International, told me numerous times that they were very pleased with the quality of our work.

This is ultimately reflected in the amount of advertising dollars that sponsors like KIA motors pay for spots during the finished televised climbing segment that will be viewed by 150 million plus people while airing in over 40 countries.

Many Operations managers, producers, directors and X-Games branding/merchandising executives spectated every round of the climbing event and spent a lot of time asking us questions about our sport.

The mayor of Shanghai was there for all of the speed climbing and the bouldering finals. They seemed genuinely entertained by the event and excited on a personal level. They are interested in expanding the role of climbing in the growth of the X-Games brand internationally – something that the climbing event organizer, Jim Waugh, has been driven to achieve for decades.

I don’t know if they will ever bring bouldering or speed climbing back into the US X-Games (that’s a subject for an entirely different interview). But after this year’s event, I foresee our sport playing a crucial role in the introduction of action sports into new markets worldwide.

I hear rumors all the time about some kind of great thing your cooking up. Can you tell us anything about that?

TF: You are hearing only rumors because for the past 2 years I have been working primarily outside of the climbing industry to develop a professional competition climbing organization aimed at promoting the sport of bouldering on a massive scale. It is my hope that one of the results of what I am pursuing will result in the true professionalization of all trades associated with competition in our sport: athlete/competitors, trainers/coaches, organizers, officials/judges and most profoundly – routesetters.

The time has come for this industry to offer a respectable career consisting of a true living wage and benefits for those individuals who have sacrificed climbing time, physical well-being and dedicate themselves to the production of the base service relied upon by every commercial climbing facility in the world to conduct business. High quality professional routesetting is equally as important as the menu in a fine restaurant.

I would like to express my gratitude to the hold companies that continue to generously support me in my international routesetting endeavors and share my vision for the future of our sport. I encourage all routesetters to support them with their business:

Revolution; HRT (Bulgaria); Teknik (CAN), Sequence (CAN); Nicros; Climb-It; E-Grips; Stone Age; ETCH; SoIll.

Email this post  |   Subscribe to post | Leave a comment