There were some questions from readers about climbing of Damaris Knorr (GER) at the Prague World Cup competition in difficulty climbing on last Sunday. She did the second attempt after a technical incident and could be originally the 3rd. Then she was the 6th. Therefore we asked for explanation of the President of Jury of World Cup in Prague Martin Joisten. He explained:
“You are rising a quite delicate question, since the contents of the
protests (there have been 5 in total during this competition) are
"internal" only. Meaning - I am not allowed to talk about them.
… I simply put down, what everyone has seen, in order not to break the rules, but to simply state what happened.
Damaris started climbing and the electricity went off. This is a
"technical incident". I tried to contact Damaris by shouting her name,
but she did not hear me and continued climbing. There is a well defined
paragraph in the rules of how to deal with technical incidents, but it
was not possible to follow the mentioned steps. So the case of Damaris
wasn't in the rules.
Normally the Category Judge should have done something, but he sat in a
"squeezed in" position, so I approached Damaris with the above mentioned
result. She was accompanied to the separate isolation zone (being a
victim of a technical incident) and the decision was taken, that she was
allowed to start again after Bettina from Austria.
Knowing the start of the route, she could climb further than before and
was ranked accordingly. After the publication of the result, a written
protest came and the Appeals Jury (only consisting of the Category Judge
and the ICC Delegate, since I was involved in the case) made their
decision and altered the result of Damaris,” Martin Joisten writes.