A matter of judgment

I was lucky enough to be at this year’s International Tree Climbing Competition (ITCC) and witness team NZ win again. Even though I have seen it before I’ll never get tired of it – New Zealand winning or the ITCC.

I was judging at this year’s competition which was a first for me; first at an international, more so than at a climbing competition. I judged the Masters Climb and the Aerial Rescue event. And when I say, ‘I judged’ what I actually mean is, I was one of five judges at each event. Each judge has a separate score sheet which they work through, the sheets with the highest and lowest score are then removed and the remaining three sheets are averaged – it’s a pretty tidy set up and reduces the possibility of random or biased results.

The Masters Climb is easy – this is the best of the best at their very best, so you just set the perfect climb in your mind then deduct points from there. Once you have envisioned that perfect climb, that becomes your base line and you stick to it. Every now and then a climber might do something that is better that you had imagined so you keep the bonus points blank just in case. There are three categories of bonus points a) Overall demonstration of skill style and presentation, b) Use of innovative techniques and equipment, and c) Overall safe work practices and techniques, each category is worth up to five points – I think I awarded bonus points to five of the eight climbers.

The Aerial Rescue is one of preliminary events along with ascent, speed climb, throw line and work climb. I found judging the Aerial Rescue harder than the Masters Climb. Everyone does the Rescue where only a handful get through to do the Masters.

This year we had nearly 70 climbers. They came from 14 countries and at least eight of them used translators – it is not called International for nothing.

Just like the Masters climb, you envision a climb which becomes your mental base line and you stick to it. But unlike the Masters climb you can’t envision the perfect climb – there is too much variation in skill level and there is not enough wriggle room on the score sheet; once you drop below a certain point all the scores become the same or once you go over a certain point all the scores become the same. When scoring the preliminary events (those that are not solely time dependent) you have to envision the middle climb then work up or down from there.

To help work out where the middle climb is, several climbers ‘run through’ the event first and you try and gauge things from there. All was going to plan, until the rain came and then kept on coming and then… things got a bit wet. Day-one was rained off. On the morning of day-two we adjusted the event to fit the shortened time frame. This was a simple mathematical equation, time available divided by number of climbers and the time to reset each event. That bit was easy, adjusting my mental base line wasn’t.

After a couple of hours, it became apparent to me that I had I set the middle climb too high – I wasn’t too far off, but my middle wasn’t falling in the middle. Setting the base line high meant that more top climbers ended up with the same points and more lower climbers received points. For the lower climbers that wasn’t an issue, but I wasn’t able to award those that excelled the recognition that they deserved. This was a shame more so than an issue and thanks to the five-judge system any potential oddness as a result of my doing would have been removed. Unluckily for me I had to remain consistent for the entire day, I had set a base line and I had to stick to it.

We started day-two in the dark and the last few climbers finished under the white lights of flash photography; it was dark. Day-three was the Masters Climb which NZ won and even though I have seen it before I’ll never get tired of it – New Zealand winning or the ITCC.