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Chris Sharma Wins Deep Water Soloing Comp

posted by dpm on 10/26/2010

The world’s first ‘artificial deep water solo’ competition recently took place in Spain and was a huge success. 

All photos courtesy of David Munillo www.davidmunilla.com

The Masters Series 1 Psicobloc competition took place in the city of Bilbao in Northeastern Spain.  A 50-foot artificial wall was built over the water of the Bilbao Estuary and competitors took repeated plunges in front of a huge audience.  Over 4000 people lined the banks of the river to watch the event and organizers, as well as participants, are saying that this new format makes climbing competition more appealing to the general population.

The competition was held in the center of Bilbao (one of the capital of northern Spain. Vasque country). The place chosen was the river which crosses the capital Bilbao, surrounded by beautiful buildings and enough space to accommodate the massive audience.
The wall had a height of 16 meters with 2 parallel routes graded (8b/8b +) that competitors tried during the morning. They were allotted two attempts, in which Sharma and Macias were the only competitors that managed to climb above the blue volume, after a spectacular dyno.
Chris Sharma had this to say on the Prana Blog:
”Looking back on the years when climbing was in the X Games but just couldn’t translate to the mainstream audience because of its slow subtle nature, this new form of competition will surely blow the minds of any non climber and I believe will be a key element in climbing becoming a more mainstream sport.”
Sharma, who ended up taking first place, also commented on the finals route:
“The wall was 50 ft tall and the route was a dynamic 5.14a that thrilled the thousands of spectators with crazy falls and tons of sports action.  It was great proof that climbing Can be an amazing spectator sport.”
Chris Sharma was able to top out twice but every other competitor took the plunge. Second place went to Bruno Macias and tied for third were Ignasi Tarrazona and Nacho Sanchez.