Coach Nearly Kills Pro Climber – GriGri Incident Analysis

[Music]

so yeah luckily the climber survived

this incident happened last year and now

I had an opportunity to talk to her he's

our coach so I trusted them but before

that I hope that for every climber

watching it is immediately clear that it

was a Blay's mistake however what I

wanted to do is to look into the details

so I upscaled the footage and looked

frame by frame did some pixel peeping to

see what else can be learned from this

experience and there is quite a bit to

uncover so I hope that we can stay

somewhat civil in the comment section

because it is a quite sensitive topic so

Sara is a professional climber from

Saudi Arabia and she was on a training

camp with French coach is to prepare for

upcoming World Cup The Climb there that

was the the warm up for me oh no it was

the first one wow the first climb of the

day no this is what I do always I go to

climb and then I fall just to get rid of

fear of falling yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

so a routine fear of falling training

ended up in broken legs and spine now

for everyone new to the sport or for

those who still needs a rem reminder

petzel who makes grigory the device used

in the incident is recommending to give

slack like

this or alternatively if you want to

give slack fast you can press on grigory

scam and give slack like this however

you must maintain at least three fingers

on the Rope at all times and I already

made multiple videos showing what

happens if you don't follow these

recommendations and press on the cam

with f holding the

rope and also in some cases you don't

even need to press on the cam the gri

can still slip now despite all of that

throughout the years I've seen so much

of No Hands belaying Everybody Knows

whose clip I should insert here or all

kinds of Dev gripping techniques you can

imagine so that at least her coach was

kind of holding the Rope between his

index and middle finger but like come on

how much grip do you have when you hold

the Rope like this it's so easy for the

Rope to fall out compared to what petel

recommends and on top of that he was

both giving and taking slack with the

same hand now on a first glance assuming

he would have good proper grip on the

brake side of the Rope giving slack and

then taking slack like this wouldn't be

a big problem however that teaches you a

wrong muscle memory and as we will see

later that actually caused a huge

problem and another a bit of

controversial topic is the usage of

gloves it's really not that comfortable

to hook on the grigory slip with the

index finger when you have gloves and

his gloves looked really thick so maybe

even gripping the Rope like this is not

comfortable with such gloves maybe

that's how he invented this dangerous

scissoring technique to hold the Rope

like this so personally I'm not a big

fan of using gloves with assisted

belaying devices because I lose the

feeling of the Rope I lose the dexterity

and all these devices need is like

couple of hundred G tugging on the rope

for device to lock even if you're

pressing on the cam and you're holding

the Rope it will still lock and you

don't need to hold much and the Rope is

not going to fly and burn your hand all

right the next problem that many pointed

out was that the bler was not paying

attention to the climber actually I

watched the whole climb many many times

it was a warm-up climb and in the

beginning the coach did watch her climb

and in general he looked like an

experienced belayer who had a good

situational awareness and slack

management however once she passed

midpoint of the climb he stopped paying

attention and on top of that he was also

distracted by the conversation with the

other coach I actually heard them

talking the whole time but I didn't say

anything cuz I trust his

years of experience and he's our coach

so I trusted him I don't let anyone talk

while bling me I'm really careful with

bling and I always check my BL so now

okay I understand it's a warm up and

you've been belaying for thousands of

hours in these situations so looking up

all the time would simply kill your neck

however clipping is extremely critical

moment because we are actively disabling

the safety of the G so it's super

important to look up during these

moments or you can simply use the blay

glasses and not have these neck issues

anymore and what really pisses me off is

that it was not one coach in that

situation three of them actually there

was three coaches one belaying and two

others were talking to that one seeing

the bad baying and we said

nothing yeah

and that's how we arrived to the

critical point she was clipping one

before the last Quick Draw and the

blayer intuitively probably felt that

there is more of the route to be climbed

but she took her test fall the Rope

started to get tight and the grigory

started to engage he probably thought

that she's climbing up and she needs

more slack so he pushed down on the

grigory to disengage the cam and tried

to give more slack and to his surprise

the Rope popped out of his left hand and

From This Moment till the ground there

was less than one second he desperately

tried to grab the rope with the left

hand remember the muscle memory so yeah

he only managed to do so when it was

already too late

and on top of all the mistakes it was

really not her lucky day she landed

right in front of the crash pads so yeah

maybe every gym owner can also learn

something from this now some of you

might think why he simply did not let go

the grigri well let me show you at this

moment he pressed on the cam to give the

slack and now I'm going to play the rest

of the clip in real time speed ready

3 2 one

done you go there as an athlete and you

trust the coaches and uh and you don't

even think that something like that can

happen and yeah how how are you how are

you recovering now it's good it's good

it's going really well uh now I'm fourth

month after I start walking finally okay

uh cuz the first three months was wasn't

I couldn't walk both feet was broken so

I couldn't but now it's going really

well do you think you will get back to

climbing yeah for sure I'll go back to

climbing nice yeah but take time even my

my back and foot my left foot I have to

do another surgery just to remove the

plates they put on what a story huh yeah

man you're such a strong person you're

smiling while telling the story is

incredible

I have nothing else to do I cried a lot

so I'm done with crying I I can't

believe it so I'm I'm laughing at

it wow I really hope that uh you will

come out of this story much

stronger and

uh hopefully even climb much harder

after all of

this you so

much so yeah a lot of things had to

align for this incident to happen bad

baying technique distracted belayer

giving slack midall however this is not

a unique case after Sara posted her

story on Instagram a lot of people

reached out to her and told that They

too had similar situations so the only

unique thing about this one is that it

was actually captured on camera and the

most important that all of these can be

easily avoided by simply following pel's

recommend recommendations of how to use

grigory instead of being creative or

thinking that I've been belaying for

multiple decades and I've never seen

Gregory fail because I think that this

coach learned his mistakes in a hard

way yeah so if you want to send some

love uh this is sar's Instagram and uh

every time I make a new grigory video I

think that this is going to be the last

G video I'm making and I have the same

feeling now but it's kind of deu feel

so let's

see climb safe