In reply to gravy:
Can you actually give a specific example, rather than just saying you've definitely seen it? I'm sure there have been ties that were broken by a time determination but I suspect that in most cases the faster climber gets to the critical move more quickly, rather than getting there at the same time and then falling off more quickly. In general, the time incentive seems more likely to reward fast climbing throughout the route, rather than giving up easily at difficult moves.
I guess you could fix the incentive by breaking the tie based on what time the climbers got to their high point, rather than what time they fell off. That would be very difficult to implement without video review though.
You seem to be suggesting that ties should be broken by handing the win to the climber with the longest time?
For the record, having looked up the IFSC rules, the time is the second level of tie break. So for your scenario to occur, two climbers would have to:
- Get to exactly the same hold in the final, with both or neither of them scoring a plus by using it to make progress
- Have previously scored exactly the same in qualification
Only after that would time come into it. Even if that happened, the faster winning climber would probably have climbed faster in general and won because of that, rather than by giving up and falling off quickly. I'm sceptical that you've seen this happen. Again, can you give an example?
Post edited at 12:27