S11.E11: Baltimore City Finals

[enoughcats]

2 hours ago, Conotocarious said:

In the link posted above the dude clears the 8th obstacle

So, why did the audience applaud when he completed the can't see the landing place jump?  The way I heard it, it was cheers of relief that he made it and they had seen enough other failures to realize that it was something special.  So the testing, in my opinion, was that they were going to have problems there, and everyone watching knew that.  

Maybe the guy doing the running new it also as he did stop before the 8th and powdered his hands.  I don't think I've seen the regular contestants offered powder in between obstacles, but maybe I wasn't seeing what I thought I saw.

[mlp]

Right there ^^^^ is a very good reason why they film the show at night.  It looks industrial and unattractive when you can see all parts of the structures and all the stuff in the background.  It all looks much, much better in the dark.

[Taeolas]

That's a great video, and shows the course from an angle most people don't see.  All the pretty-ness of the course tends to be in the direction the cameras face, so the audience don't see a lot of the filler (Angry Birds was all black on the back for example).

I'm pretty sure chalk dust is available if a ninja wants it; in the past I've seen them use it occasionally. Why no one used it this time I don't know. It probably would have helped at that time. 

This tester took his time running through it (and even with that time would have won the city finals. 🙂 ). There were probably a number of tester wipeouts before then, so when a tester did make it past Angry Birds it was probably a relief and acceptance that it could be done. I'm sure they had more testers go through the course to show it was doable.

If you read through some of the links above, the Ask Me Anything did have a comment from a course tester saying how when the producers wanted to prove to the Ninjas the obstacles were doable, they grabbed him and told him to do it (granted Salmon Ladder throuhg Angry Birds). He normally climbs to reset Crank It Up, so he said he literally climbed down, changed his shoes and ran through that part. I suspect he's probably the same guy we probably just saw do it in that video from doing the full course. 

The AMA also indicates that they have course testers run through the course with the ninjas watching, so the Ninjas can see the obstacles are doable as well as go through what is legal and illegal for each one. (From what I can tell, "Red is good" you can touch/grab/hold onto anything red. Anything not-red, and you can be DQed). Some obstacles have further limits, like not using your legs, but most of the time anything goes. 

[Conotocarious]

There’s also an Instagram account of someone (not sure if he was a tester or not) who completed the course. I went to look for it but he took it down to re-edit it. His account is @adam-lats. 

[Quilt Fairy]

12 hours ago, enoughcats said:

Maybe the guy doing the running new it also as he did stop before the 8th and powdered his hands.  I don't think I've seen the regular contestants offered powder in between obstacles, but maybe I wasn't seeing what I thought I saw.

My impression was that he stopped and shook out his arms between most obstacles, especially since he didn't have a time constraint. 

[jhlipton]

On 8/12/2019 at 5:45 PM, Hellga said:

So far everyone has crashed out on the same place on that obstacle. 

On 8/12/2019 at 10:03 PM, SophiaD said:

Everyone going out on the same place? 

Not exactly the same place.  The montage of the 22 falls was brilliant!

But I agree, it was way too hard!

===================================

Alyssa was the only woman to make it up the Warped Wall, as opposed to several on other city finals.  But I think that may have more to do with the 4th obstacle than with the women -- Crank It Up is far more difficult, especially for the women, than Coconut Climb.

[RedbirdNelly]

2 weeks in a row when no one finishes--in my opinion that is bad course design. At a minimum there should be a couple who at least attempt the last obstacle. Watching everyone fall was not cool. Having everyone bunch up at the 8th where it becomes a "who completes 7 obstacles fastest" was not fun to me. Oh, well.