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Clifbar sponsors Chris Davenport, Mr and Mrs Benchetler, Caroline Gleich, Josh Daiek, Eric Pollard, a few other ski mountaineering guys and gals, and a few snowboarders including Big Mountain Jeremy Jones (brother of TGR boys).
I can see where they may be coming from... if one of the athletes dies, I don't know how PR would look.
On the other hand this is how these people make their money, especially in a sport like this... as long as they are clinically sane, I don't see any fault in clif sponsoring them.
At the end of the day, the people partaking in these activities really define how dangerous it is. As I was saying before, typically people won't do something completely deadly unless they are insane...
I can totally understand that decision. If someone chooses to explore an aspect of a sport that puts their life at risk, is it really right for a company to both endorse them and profit off said risk? Sponsorship is basically an exchange of an athlete's endorsement for certain products, in exchange for continued support to do whatever it is they do.
When you support athletes you not only support their endeavors, you also encourage others to follow, and the athlete is expected to do more of the same in order to continue being sponsored. Its just the way advertising works.
What if it suddenly became fashionable to ski in foolishly bad avalanche conditions or do ridiculously dangerous solo ski-mountaineering? Is that a reasonable amount of risk? Should a company not only encourage an athlete to put their lives in danger by doing these things, but also encourage the people that look up to these athletes to do the same? I don't think so. Its not a black and white issue though, and I don't know climbing well enough to say much about Clif Bar's decision.
I would say its one of the first companies for pulling sponsorship on a sport for taking it too far or too extreme. Kind of crazy in my eyes, as someone like Red Bull (though i can't see Alex Honnold climbing for Red Bull) who will pick them up.
You get companies that will drop athletes who pull some delinquent act like beating their girlfriend or getting a DUI, but not like this. My only thought is they don't want to be sponsoring athletes they potentially would have kids or other people trying to follow in their footsteps and dying, other the athletes themselves dying in an accident.
Regardless, gonna be interesting how future situations like this will play out.
panojibber.Its not a black and white issue though, and I don't know climbing well enough to say much about Clif Bar's decision.
You made some really good points, this one in particular. I also don't know enough about climbing to gauge what's dangerous and what's not. I think it's not out of the question to say that it's possible that Clif might not fully understand the risk?
Although as I said: I'm not aware of the risk... It's possible that other climbers look at these people like they are complete jokers and partake in activities that "no sane person would ever do" ...
All I know is some people I show ski videos to think that it's the most dangerous, deadly, risky, crazy thing they've ever seen...
Sponsoring someone basically says you condone what they're doing. If someone is taking risks that the company deems unnecessary, then I don't see what's wrong with them dropping the athlete. I think it said that they would drop people who were free climbing or whatever, which I assume means without ropes. It's because they see climbing without harnesses to be an unnecessary risk. They don't want people to look at their sponsorship and think "That's what I need to do to be sponsored", when they don't.
Yanowhumsayin?
.Rybak.As long as the sponsor is not liable for the risks the athlete takes I see no good reason for them to drop an athlete.
They are basically paying them to take risks.
That is literally the exact reason they are pulling the sponsorships, they don't want to pay them to take risks because they think it is morally wrong.
The activities that these athletes were doing simply aren't profitable for Clif Bar. Wingsuit BASE and free soloing are fringe activities which bring a relatively small amount of money to the Clif brand which was more than likely the primary reasoning in dropping them.
panojibber.What if it suddenly became fashionable to ski in foolishly bad avalanche conditions
Your point makes zero sense. There are no avalanches while rock climbing. And this must be the first time a sponsor has dropped an athlete for doing something they don't endorse. Like this is revolutionary news.
JenniferGarnerYour point makes zero sense. There are no avalanches while rock climbing. And this must be the first time a sponsor has dropped an athlete for doing something they don't endorse. Like this is revolutionary news.
The free soloing of Honnold and high line base that Dean does are on a whole different level of "dangerous" than what their sponsored skiers do (listed above). However, I think it's lame that they kind of bailed on them after being a loyal sponsor for so long...
Climbing is also very different than skiing, where you don't see these guys putting up edits with Clif Bar logo's everywhere, or sporting Clif bar stickers on their gear like skiers do. Point being...whenever I watch them climb, I would never know they were associated with Clif Bar and the general public will also have no idea.
Regardless, I could live off of these...Cool Mint Chocolate FTW
Yeah, this was shot by Chin, who is quoted in the article above. I think that is one of the best advertisements I have ever seen, especially for something kind of ordinary like squares pace.
I can understand their logic in dropping them. The only thing that doesn't make sense is why the dropped them, but arn't doing anything to distance themselves from "Valley Uprising". If they don't want to condone free-soloing, BASE jumping, and highwire why continue promoting a film that is based on all of that. (havn't seen it, but Im assuming it has a lot of that shit in it.)
Firstly, I claim to be pretty keen climber and watch almost as many climbing edits as ski edits... almost...
A few posters seem to suggest that the athletes have recently started engaging in more dangerous activities than before but this really isn't the case. Alex Honnold and Dean Potters name's are synonymous with free solo climbing and were so before cliff bar sponsored them.The other athletes are like wise.
The only reason I can think of for why they dropped them is that by sponsoring them, they are effectively funding the activities and if they were to be killed then they might feel personally responsible (definitely not in a legal sense though).
Personally I feel they should let the athletes decide what risks are acceptable but it's their money in the end. Also, dropping their sponsorship won't stop them doing what they love anyway; they managed fine before they were sponsered
TOAST.I can understand their logic in dropping them. The only thing that doesn't make sense is why the dropped them, but arn't doing anything to distance themselves from "Valley Uprising". If they don't want to condone free-soloing, BASE jumping, and highwire why continue promoting a film that is based on all of that. (havn't seen it, but Im assuming it has a lot of that shit in it.)
Because they already paid to have their name on the movie... they're not going to waste that money by telling them to remove their logo from the beginning of the film.
cydwhitYeah, this was shot by Chin, who is quoted in the article above. I think that is one of the best advertisements I have ever seen, especially for something kind of ordinary like squares pace.
I don't think so. The credits of the TNF video say Cedar Wright, who is also one of the CLIF athletes who was dropped.
I would have to say it's a concern in: maybe if I eat this clifbar I can free solo el cap. Yes it's America people think like that, just a liability thing.
Lets be real, they dropped them because their insurance company and their lawyers told them their liability was too high. Why didn't the article even touch on that? It's glaringly obvious that's the case, as they chose to sponsor a film, yet not the individual athletes in it.
They should do what other companies with dangerous working conditions do. Take out life 2 insurance policies on their workers. One payable to the nearest of kin (or whoever the employee wants), and one payable to the company to fight any lawsuits.
I think we need to look at the deep issues and why they dropped them. Climbing is such a small and niche sport. So little people actually climb, meanwhile follow athletes, etc in the sport. Its such an under the radar sport, well below 99% of most sports out there. Giving these guys money im sure brought in such little revenue for the cost of sponsoring these people. Maybe climbing is big in ourdoors type areas (CO, mountain towns, etc) but for the most part has really no spectator value and no real way to monetize their sponsored athletes. As far as their ski/snowboard athletes, again, while both are huge sports and generate a lot of money through sponsored athletes much more than climbing, such a small % of the ski/snowboard community actually mountaineers and hikes massive peaks for tracks. Most backcountry people are using sleds now.
It's not because all of a sudden clif bar thought "oh these guys are making us nervous". It has more to do with clif bar being sold at literally every gas station and grocery store in america and probably some moms were bitching about how their sponsorship of these guys was irresponsible in some way.
I'm sure it makes sense for clif bar when you crunch the numbers, but it just kind of makes them look like a company without a spine, run by sissies.
Body builder bars - eat the top half first. Suck on the chocolate like you're savoring a tootsie roll. Enjoy the bottom half like a gourmet meal. Thank me later
I get the sense that the primary concern was that their sponsorship may alter athlete's perceptions of risk and lead to them taking on more risk than they are necessarily comfortable with. How much danger are these athletes comfortable facing? Do they then feel pressure to face more danger because they are paid to climb and are now representing a brand? Will they take more risks when a camera is pointed at them? If Clif is no longer comfortable with this more power to them. But as mentioned before, it seems like strange timing. I saw Valley Uprising last weekend and it very much seemed to come across as a Clif Bar movie promoting all of these activities they have now condemned as too dangerous. So how is it okay to pay for a movie featuring these things but not support the athletes directly?
That said, this issue seems hugely applicable to skiing. Say a skier gets invited on his first big mountain filming trip with a heli - it pukes snow, he heads out there, he digs his pit and gets a sense of the stability. At what point would he have decided the snowpack was unstable and turned back if it was just him and a couple buddies? At what point does he decide to turn back now that he has the expectations of sponsors and filming laid upon him? If these sponsors made the difference in his decision-making process, to what degree are they responsible if an accident does occur? You don't need a guy with a walkie-talkie telling him to ski, just having these thoughts in the back of his mind can be enough to influence his choices.
Again this is applicable to competition skiing too - we've had discussions about unsafe courses before. If the course is dangerous, jumps poorly built, or the weather conditions incredibly poor, it would make sense for athletes to consider pulling out. Why was it that Shaun was the only one who chose to pull out in Sochi? I know you guys like to suggest it's because he was worried about losing, or because he's a massive pussy, but could it be that he felt more secure in his position than others who would also have wanted to pull out? Those who are still making a name for themselves and proving themselves to their sponsors?
Alex Honnold is one of my favorite rock climbers and I am kind of bummed that they dropped him, but at the same time he isn't doing what he does because he wants free clif bars. He does it because he loves the sport and he is damn good at it too, so should we really get upset when a company pulls away from an extreme sport citing dangers? I don't think so.
SimplyCleanThe free soloing of Honnold and high line base that Dean does are on a whole different level of "dangerous" than what their sponsored skiers do (listed above). However, I think it's lame that they kind of bailed on them after being a loyal sponsor for so long...
Climbing is also very different than skiing, where you don't see these guys putting up edits with Clif Bar logo's everywhere, or sporting Clif bar stickers on their gear like skiers do. Point being...whenever I watch them climb, I would never know they were associated with Clif Bar and the general public will also have no idea.
Regardless, I could live off of these...Cool Mint Chocolate FTW
paige.I get the sense that the primary concern was that their sponsorship may alter athlete's perceptions of risk and lead to them taking on more risk than they are necessarily comfortable with. How much danger are these athletes comfortable facing? Do they then feel pressure to face more danger because they are paid to climb and are now representing a brand? Will they take more risks when a camera is pointed at them? If Clif is no longer comfortable with this more power to them. But as mentioned before, it seems like strange timing. I saw Valley Uprising last weekend and it very much seemed to come across as a Clif Bar movie promoting all of these activities they have now condemned as too dangerous. So how is it okay to pay for a movie featuring these things but not support the athletes directly?
Whole different level of dangerous? What bosh. The clippings on the wall in my bedroom have stayed the same for the last decade; five of the skiers there are now dead (McConkey, CR Johnson, Jamie Pierre, Sarah Burke, JP Auclair). Honnold himself has addressed this: risk is a relative factor between ability and conditions. Consequence is the result. Clif's ski athletes certainly put their lives on the line.
Sponsored athletes of all stripes play the mental game of risk. Sponsors pay them, in many cases, because they do engage in risky, high stakes activities that garner large media attention. It's bullshit to make BASE or free soloing the line when it's very clear that the same kinds of risks occur in many of the other people they sponsor.
Clif paid big dollars for their sponsorship of the film. The money is already spent on touring, filming, editing, everything that goes into making movies like that. They can't go back on sponsorship without writing off the whole endeavor.
This whole thing stinks of a high handed intervention by top people who didn't see or know about the debauchery that would come with Valley Uprising until it was playing on the movie screen that they paid for. The inconsistency of risk assessment is absurd.
LiteratureWhole different level of dangerous? What bosh. The clippings on the wall in my bedroom have stayed the same for the last decade; five of the skiers there are now dead (McConkey, CR Johnson, Jamie Pierre, Sarah Burke, JP Auclair). Honnold himself has addressed this: risk is a relative factor between ability and conditions. Consequence is the result. Clif's ski athletes certainly put their lives on the line.
Sponsored athletes of all stripes play the mental game of risk. Sponsors pay them, in many cases, because they do engage in risky, high stakes activities that garner large media attention. It's bullshit to make BASE or free soloing the line when it's very clear that the same kinds of risks occur in many of the other people they sponsor.
Clif paid big dollars for their sponsorship of the film. The money is already spent on touring, filming, editing, everything that goes into making movies like that. They can't go back on sponsorship without writing off the whole endeavor.
This whole thing stinks of a high handed intervention by top people who didn't see or know about the debauchery that would come with Valley Uprising until it was playing on the movie screen that they paid for. The inconsistency of risk assessment is absurd.
Hmmm, I really need to see Valley Uprising. I think Alex's quote is really interesting
""It's a general reflection on risk," Honnold said. "The risk decision that Clif is making is the same kind of decision that we all make as athletes. I think it's completely fair for them to draw a line. It's a very personal decision. If Clif thought about it and said that that's the line that they want to take, I can't begrudge that. That's the same kind of line I draw with risk."
Also, the clippings comment is really insightful, I really am not sure where I stand on a lot of this stuff, I guess I just need to see the film, I've been stoked since that trailer came out forever ago.
paige.I get the sense that the primary concern was that their sponsorship may alter athlete's perceptions of risk and lead to them taking on more risk than they are necessarily comfortable with. How much danger are these athletes comfortable facing? Do they then feel pressure to face more danger because they are paid to climb and are now representing a brand? Will they take more risks when a camera is pointed at them? If Clif is no longer comfortable with this more power to them. But as mentioned before, it seems like strange timing. I saw Valley Uprising last weekend and it very much seemed to come across as a Clif Bar movie promoting all of these activities they have now condemned as too dangerous. So how is it okay to pay for a movie featuring these things but not support the athletes directly?
I have a slight issue with this critique. A bit of a chicken or the egg argument. They supported these guys through the production of the project even though I'm sure these discussions have been going on for a while to varying degrees. Like they said, they are drawing a line in the sand looking forward.
dyyylanThat is literally the exact reason they are pulling the sponsorships, they don't want to pay them to take risks because they think it is morally wrong.
Can't ever recall a time in history when having huge balls was morally wrong.
LiteratureWhole different level of dangerous? What bosh. The clippings on the wall in my bedroom have stayed the same for the last decade; five of the skiers there are now dead (McConkey, CR Johnson, Jamie Pierre, Sarah Burke, JP Auclair). Honnold himself has addressed this: risk is a relative factor between ability and conditions. Consequence is the result. Clif's ski athletes certainly put their lives on the line.
I'm not saying the skiers don't put their lives on the line and do dangerous things. I'm saying the room for error Alex and Dean have in some of their lines are MUCH smaller than the skiers mentioned in the OP. Yes, avalanches happen and are unavoidable, but the chances of the hundereds of holds Alex grabs on a 2000 ft. multi-pitch route and him slipping are MUCH higher.
Also, if Alex falls there's no chances of living at all. People getting stuck in an avy, the chances of living EXIST...and there is technology and people to aid in rescue if needed even though the chances may be small. That little bit matters a lot for sponsorship in this case.
t_robObviously this is not ski related however skiing is dangerous and Clifbar sponsors skiers.
They aren't pulling out of climbing entirely, just the fringe - which IS extremely dangerous. A quote from the letter: "As such, going forward we will not be sponsoring climbers who are primarily recognized for free-soloing, B.A.S.E. jumping and highlining."
I think it's a good call. BASE jumping is fucked, and the risk of death is so high you can barely call it a risk. The inevitability of death would be more accurate. It would be a hard concious decision to support someone on their goal of dying for thrills.
This is much more about the perception of risk than actual risk. High altitude mountaineering, for example, has a much, much higher rate of death than free soloing. An athlete doing the type of ski/board mountaineering that Jeremy Jones, etc. do is also way, way more likely to die in an accident. Free soloing has no margin for error, but the factors that lead to an athlete's death are much more under their control, and consequently a free soloist isn't climbing things that they believe they have any chance of falling on (Alex Honnold climbs 5.14; 5.12 is quite a bit below his ability). Hypothetically - would you be comfortable skiing a blue square run if a fall meant death?
The interesting aspect isn't why Clif Bar did it (which is obvious - they are a big enough company that they don't need to expose themselves to the legal liability that someone is going to copy-cat freesolo and die doing it). It's the fact that mountain athletes are dependent on sponsorship money to make a living. If companies stop sponsoring cutting-edge athletes that do certain aspects of the sport, then those companies, not the athletes, are influencing the direction that the sport goes.
reBlockeway, way more likely to die in an accident. Free soloing
Dude, we all know this. That's why Cliff Bar is dropping them from the team. We all know free soloing is seriously dangerous and I wouldn't eat these space bars knowing that .00001% of the profit is going towards funding people who partake in such activities.
SimplyCleanI'm not saying the skiers don't put their lives on the line and do dangerous things. I'm saying the room for error Alex and Dean have in some of their lines are MUCH smaller than the skiers mentioned in the OP. Yes, avalanches happen and are unavoidable, but the chances of the hundereds of holds Alex grabs on a 2000 ft. multi-pitch route and him slipping are MUCH higher.
Also, if Alex falls there's no chances of living at all. People getting stuck in an avy, the chances of living EXIST...and there is technology and people to aid in rescue if needed even though the chances may be small. That little bit matters a lot for sponsorship in this case.
I get what you're bearing towards, but look at the cause of death in all of the people I mentioned: two from slides, one from ski Base, one from hitting rocks inbounds, one from a halfpipe slam. It's not all avie danger, in this case representing only 40% of our totally random and unrepresentative group.
Honnold has spoken at length about this--for people like him and Potter, the risks involved in what they do are much less than what we imagine. They're very skilled. They make exceptionally calculated decisions. They only go when the routes are in good condition, and after they've cleaned the hell out of them. And Honnold doesn't tell people about his projects before they happen so that the sponsor pressure doesn't sway him.
There's a difference between risk, which is somewhat subjective to conditions and individuals, and consequence. Skiers and snowboarders enter "no fall zones" in the mountains all the time, which function exactly like anything Honnold lines up to solo--and have the same consequences.
So why isn't Clif getting rid of them? I don't see any consistency to the line that they're drawing.
LiteratureThere's a difference between risk, which is somewhat subjective to conditions and individuals, and consequence. Skiers and snowboarders enter "no fall zones" in the mountains all the time, which function exactly like anything Honnold lines up to solo--and have the same consequences.
So why isn't Clif getting rid of them? I don't see any consistency to the line that they're drawing.
I agree with you that their decision seems inconsistent. For example they decided highlining is one of the activities which is too dangerous and needed to have support withdrawn from. But, correct me if I'm wrong as it's not something I've followed too closely, highlining often is done with ropes and a harness to secure the individual to the line. So although it can be dangerous, it isn't necessarily so (and in those cases is certainly less so than activities they continue to support).
paige.I agree with you that their decision seems inconsistent. For example they decided highlining is one of the activities which is too dangerous and needed to have support withdrawn from. But, correct me if I'm wrong as it's not something I've followed too closely, highlining often is done with ropes and a harness to secure the individual to the line. So although it can be dangerous, it isn't necessarily so (and in those cases is certainly less so than activities they continue to support).
I think you guys and this article completely misunderstood CLIFBARs decision. They're not against highlining, their against Jai Alaing... which is an insanely dangerous sport. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfByJcWY4r4
