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The BIGGEST ever bouldering event in Singapore was held at the Orchard Park on the 21-22nd of Dec 2002…and rightfully so, with a 10-faced climbing wall, 18 routes and 3 power tests…no other bouldering event would have come close!…And the rules were different as well! With no isolation, unlimited number of tries and no time limit, climbers were free to roam around, choose their problems at their leisure and share beta with other climbers. No wonder all who were there had so much fun…even in the rain!
The event kicked off with the Schools Event on Saturday, 21st Dec 2002, About 150 students from various schools spent the whole morning tackling the 18 problems. By the time the event was truncated due to rain at 2pm, the results were quite certain. Mervyn Teo came up tops in the “Boys” category with 3390 points followed closely by Mark Lim (3230pts) and James Ong (2830pts).
Farah Cheah (1180pts) was crowned the “Girls” Champion with Carlene Yap(1155pts) in 2nd place and Chen Yan Ying(715pts) in 3rd. No surprise that Temasek JC was the overall champion school…the top 3 climbers from both the Boys and Girls categories are from the school anyway! Maybe the Asian Youth Championships held in KL the same weekend had denied our other young talents from competing…Lets see if TJC could repeat their sterling results in the next Climb-on Singapore!
The routes were obviously “tweaked” to make the OPEN Event on Sunday more exciting. Resident hustlers like Spider, Yam, Jay, Hatta, Tan Leng, Jenny etc. came out in full force all psyched for top honours! Almost 300 climbers signed up for the Sunday event so long queues at the more popular routes were a common sight. It became obvious towards the end of the event that time management and strategy were more important than climbing prowess!
The weather was kinder on Sunday and the event went on as planned till 3pm. Mohd Assad chalked up 4630 pts to win the Men’s category with Yam Choon Hian (4565pts) a close 2nd and Jay Koh (4356pts) in 3rd place. Kelly Chen was the Ladies’ champion with 1910 points followed closely by Jenny Lee (1894pts) and Goh Tan Leng (1784). The team of hagglers from NTU (supposedly!) scored more than double the number of points than their closest rival to win the Teams category….Hmm! Maybe we’ll have to be more strict in the definitions for “Team” in 2003!
Other interesting results…..
- Mohd Assad “dead-hanged” for 4mins 55 secs to earn 590 pts!
- Miss Goh Tan leng managed 17 chin-ups!(national record for ladies?)
- Rocket boy Hatta “dynoed” to 300 pts on his first try! Hatta also only turn up at 1 pm but still managed to amass 3880 pts in 2 hours for a 7th place finish!
- Javin did 7 chin-ups…with only his right hand!
We are convinced everybody had good fun and looking forward for the same event in 2003. Superlative comments like “…best thing ever!” and “…most happening!” were abound! Where and when else could u pay $5 to get a nice top, whole day of climbing on 18 quality routes and even stand to win $5000 worth of prizes?!!….So look out for an even bigger event Next Year!
“CLIMB-ON SINGAPORE!” is a climbing festival organized by PAYM and Adventure Team with technical expertise from CLIMB ASIA in conjunction with the Konika Celebration Tree@Orchard. We would like to thank Wee Chuan and Jun Bin for assisting in the route-setting, Peter Woon with music as well as the volunteers from Temasek Poly, Temasek JC and PAYM who made the event possible.
Written by Halil, CLIMB ASIA.
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