Outdoor Research Presents: Proof of Concept

[Music] sure one of the very best looking for that second olympic slot so sean got real boulder pedigree for sure the most experienced of the climbers and sean really does excel when it comes to technique and footwork so amazing lock-off strength so impressive quite that final jump move oh john bailey got his game face on he's pretty relaxed character all round but really seems focused today i mean after the speed discipline i think he knows that he has no wiggle room sean's definitely had one of the better years i've seen out of any climber out there the story of sean's last year is packed to the brim with incredible accomplishments what happened on ace of spades climbing some of the hardest boulders in the world multiple gold medal wins and one of the hardest routes in the world and that all happened in one year the build up to this event and then the adrenaline of the day shawn really could do with getting it done first go sean bailey now lining it up the left hand lands and so does the right that is partially his style of climbing he doesn't ever really look that tired it's always surprising if he does come off because he looks like he's got it still he doesn't just throw stuff out there because when he says it it means he thought about it and i don't think there's much out there in the current climbing world that he wouldn't be able to go sure all the down are as fresh as possible for him you can't really have any more mistakes today established on the boulder now choosing the more static method of pressing in he has quite good footwork and is generally comfortable on his feet so this section shouldn't give him too much of a problem moving his way out to the left volume with his foot in a nice stance really nicely over to the zone oh a little bobble and he knows that that was a huge mistake so that slip has been absolutely crucial sean bailey is out the win is gone for him the olympic dream sadly ends here a devastating day for sean bailey thus far but sadly no matter what he does here sean he will not be going to the olympics sean's relationship with failure is probably better than most he's always been very hard on himself but when he falls short it's just fuel that's it i mean it's sick there's like one real nasty edge in the first crux um hard hard roll under to pretty good hold kind of some more casual climbing for like three moves and then uh another little crux on pretty bad left hand um into another undercling rest and then and either left right section or you could go either way so got to decide what i want to do i want jinx myself yeah i'm giving myself good odds to do it flash i'd have to have to be perfect dude only one person's flashed 15a adam andre trying to flash a 15a is very difficult um trying to red point 15a is very difficult um but yeah it's i mean to have the confidence in yourself and to find a perfect root 15a is not really something that people are like oh yeah let's go out and try to flash it 15a flash is pretty next level i mean pronouns happened i like didn't feel like i got the opportunity to do what i wanted to do um and i was pissed there was definitely this like internal battle going on of like you know like why am i doing this like am i doing this for the right reasons or am i just doing it to get an olympic spot or am i just doing it to compete for the sake of competing um and i couldn't fully reconcile that for the whole world cup season yes come on come on come on sean come on man come on come on yes ally come on i just didn't know where my motivation was coming from like i was just trying to figure out what i was doing it for the whole time and i think it's hard to compete unless you're really motivated towards the competitions and it's a mental battle if you're winning or if you're losing either way it's hard so if you're not motivated to just grind and try your hardest and maybe get shut down like maybe find some success then i feel like you're going to end up getting pretty tired over the course of a season there's also just an element of ego too where i don't know you know i knew i was capable i knew it was this goal that everyone was going for i think after that i was honestly just finding my joy for climbing again remembering the reasons i love it that are internal not about any of the other [ __ ] that i was thinking about pre-olympics [Music] what he is genetically real good like better than most put together that with really hard work a lot of dedication pretty self-driven self-hating phenom i guess that's a good way of putting it it's real good at what he does yes oh that's so close that was about as close as you can get to trying to flash 15a went for the final move missed the final move and that was kind of the move where if you stick that then i would have given him like a 95 chance of going to the top i mean ever since i saw that footage i was thinking about bibliography but after aces spades i think i realized i was ready to go make it happen it's one of those things that means so much more in the context of his entire year it's gonna be like a year that i think he remembers for the rest of his life and everybody else remembers only a handful of people in the world could climb bibliography put shawn's incredible year on top of that and starts to become stuff of legends sean has always had really big goals there's not a lot of people out there that can say i can do that and it's real [Music] bibliography is the epitome of a classic sport climb where there's hard boulders bad rests and then long endurance sections in between the bottom of bib starts with lower end 514 into a pretty hero arrest and then you get into this kind of extended boulder problem maybe like a long v13 or something like that the top of it goes at around v12 it starts off with this long like iso reach to a gas stone that's pretty bad it kind of always feels like it's slipping a little bit and then right hand comes in really close it's hard to get all your fingers on these two holds [Music] kind of long reach to a pocket that fits two pretty comfortably and try to get the third in there right foot up and then one more kind of long reach to pretty like pretty in cut and then you're in uh the main rest or the middle rest which is pretty bad and the only reason i even thought it was a rest was because i watched seb rest there and i watched stefano rest there for minutes at a time so moving off of the rest there's some pretty consistent climbing into the top crux which probably sits around v10 the top crux is super super technical i think is the main thing most the consequential holes are a little sloppy so you have to have them the right way [Music] i feel like i've been so sport plumbing focused for years and years and years and then over the last two years or so got a lot more psyched on bouldering just because of like comps and stuff and being in tokyo too just training in at those gyms and training on hard kind of comp style boulders for a while i feel like i didn't know where i stood and bouldering i kind of wanted to see what i could do with that new strength i feel like i was trying to figure out how to try hard building outside because it's definitely a different mentality and process to like try a hundred percent you know i've looked up to everyone that's been doing these hard boulders for a long time so i wasn't able to conceptualize doing that myself i think until i actually felt grips i didn't feel like i needed to prove myself but i felt like i needed to prove it to myself that it was possible and then white noise i was like [ __ ] i can do this like pretty quick and so then i felt like the world was just opened up to like there's some really sick boulders out there that just didn't think i was capable of trying and all of a sudden like oh i can try these let's get to it [Music] come on do it right [Music] nice come on [Music] perfect dude come on good tension [Music] come on sean come on sean [Music] good stay stay on point come on [Music] nice dude how did it feel [Music] sean was putting things in place a long time ago to make sure that these dreams that he has now become a reality [Music] he did grand illusion fast he did box therapy fast and these are some of the hardest climbs in the world and he did him quick so it's like as soon as he's coming across something that he actually has to invest weeks months seasons into trying this thing like you'll be able to do some crazy [ __ ] a lot more to come for him [Music] very very few world cup competitors are willing to commit multiple months into outdoor climbing because it's just such a risky sacrifice you think that by focusing on outdoors you're losing your competition edge and then when you get back into the season once you're behind it's really hard to catch up so the fact that sean was able to have a lot of success outdoors and then quickly transition back into competition and find his flow is something that hardly anybody can do hello and welcome to the finals of the ifsc boulder world cup in salt lake city so to win a gold medal in a bouldering world cup first you have to get to the right fitness which takes a decade of consistent training and then you have the base requirements then you have to get your mental game right make it through qualifiers which is never a given for anybody make it through semi-finals which you have to have a fantastic day and then compete against the world's best and still believe that you can win gold to have them all lineup is uh very difficult to say the [Music] [Applause] create least little stall in the momentum that was ingenious great that's the final body position right sean bailey wakes this crowd up on top of boulder one for the world's very best you can expect to win [Music] multiple world cups in your career for everybody else you're dreaming of just winning one and for 95 percent of those people that dream will never be achieved [Applause] it's about using your angles to your greatest advantage oh yeah and he does a great job oh that shot bailey with one arm move i was talking about earlier something he's so good at catching anything one-handed and a huge smile from sean bailey first world cup win he's proving the wins to himself he's proving the red points to himself and it's just so happens that everyone else is watching mr sean bailey of the usa with his first world cup win is going to get his flowers here sean bailey is so excited shawn bailey gold here in salt lake city what is the first thought in your mind right now oh man i don't know man i i can't even think right now i just never thought this day would come and it's crazy that it came [Applause] welcome to the swiss mountain town of villas stefano looking at that list of climbers we've got some serious talent on that stage right now and there is alex magos himself matches that moves him into first position with 32 the top beckoning now for alex magos what a fight through the conditions and the route pops out sean bailey a bit of a legend on the underground climbing scene and becoming more and more mainstream as he smashes his way through the ifsc probably gonna know there's no tops at the moment i think he would have heard the crowd go crazy for a top so he's aware that he doesn't necessarily need to get to the top to win but alberto giannis lopez is coming behind him he's going to be certainly going for that top so sean will do everything he can to secure this but sean bailey making it look like it's incredibly easy though he jumps into second position he's going for magos score here remember alex kind of foot popped sean bailey though this is the move that almost did but alex but shawn has got to it into first position for sean bailey [Music] as he eyes up the finishing hole will he be the person at the top of this route only one athlete to go as sean bailey comes across with no feet into these nasty last few crips and there he loses it kicking out right that could be our winning run with one athlete to go we will see and alberto gines lopez what a moment for that young man one of the favorites for the win here tonight in villas yeah not fresh yet and he pauses here you know there's a rest coming alberto takes a big fall which means that sean bailey is our winner here tonight riding high at the boat as he gets his first lead gold medal not a lot of climbers who were able to win gold medal in lead and bouldering yeah it does show a true diversity winning both disciplines in the same year requires this balance that puts you at a disadvantage for both it's an art that competitors spend their whole lives perfecting i can count on one hand how many competitors can win a world cup in both disciplines in the same season welcome to the 2021 lead world cup in chamonix france sean bailey well he's been a bit of a revelation during this year's tour he won last week in vilas he's looking very very confident and chilled out here at the moment but we know he's got such a fire inside and that man will fight to the absolute end i think this route is gonna give credit to those who don't panic and i know sean as an athlete is one of the most relaxed people i've ever seen competing like yeah there's a lot of confidence in that young man at the moment bumping his hand up to leave room for that knee bar and he's going to try to get it in and he's making it work wow there we go root setters you can do it right sure currently in third position now moving into second position it's going from right to left and a big move coming up here to this slap and he drops it yeah and the fact that sean bailey of course last week's winner he's fallen on that route i mean we know how difficult this is now about halfway through this men's final [Music] there's the final choosing to go past that clear oh that's the knee bar trap we were talking about one moment for that man in all the drama he always forgot that shawna just won his second lead world cup watching sean win three world cups in a season and placed second in the lead world cup season it's got to be the beginning of a of a major evolution in u.s competition climbing my [Music] i mean if it feels like it's felt the past couple days i actually think pretty good shot ah [Music] two days ago on my last try i was pretty bricked and pulled on and tried to link from the boulder to uh to the top and like fell on the last move like undercling move and i felt like terrible that try so i feel like if i feel any better in that i got a good chance and i'd like to think i mean [ __ ] if it even felt like it felt this try i think hopefully it'll feel better than that so just keep like head together and [ __ ] john oh my god i feel like [ __ ] [Music] come on [Music] so [Music] [Music] i don't know [Music] [Music] [Music] climbing something that's the hardest [ __ ] you've tried not to mention the hardest [ __ ] in the world becomes more of a mind game as the days went on it was more of like how much longer can he stick it out for how much more can he take in the head your head becomes your number one enemy when you're projecting something at this difficulty oh hmm nice oh okay bye ah oh i just started the fitness i can't do it through that whole time i had this mentality of like i know i can do it i know i can do it because i had gotten pretty close through that mindset it was just like failure after failure after failure realizing that i'm not in control of every single variable and just trying to perform the best i can in a moment in time being present and doing your actual best i kept thinking through the whole process was i would really like to see this process through and have like a positive experience with it it just meant being in you know a mental state where i could be successful by you know the end of the trip i did really want to like get into a mentality where whether i send or didn't send i knew that if i stayed you know another like two weeks mentality would still be positive and i'd still have like a chance like some of those days to do it just trying to find a proof of concept mentality to work with [Music] [Music] oh [Music] sadly no matter what he does here sean he will not be going to the olympics nice dude how did it feel yeah that wind kicked up he's just always in the pursuit of learning about climbing i don't think that's going to slow down [Applause] he basically did box therapy in a rainstorm one plus one has never equal to sean is on track to be one of the greats [Music] relinquishing control over almost every single variable is like how i can find success i've noticed in comps and i've noticed it outside where you get into these grooves where you find the right place to be successful and and you think i'll never lose this because i know where this place is and i know how it feels but the reality is you change a little bit as a person and maybe you achieve more or your expectations change and you kind of you know reach a different place and then you lose it you don't remember what that feeling was and like how you got there and so you gotta find it again [Music] oh that is sick

Channel: Outdoor Research

Views: 142,910

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Id: OneTmfEsANI

Length: 31min 44sec (1904 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 30 2022