Will the 2nd Stage Clear Record Be Broken This Tournament?

[azn]

Incredibly, 22-23 years after SK4, the Second Stage clear record is still set at 11 clears. There have been instances where this record had the potential to be either tied or broken (I.e SK12, had Yamada removed his gloves, or SK29 if the Backstream wasn't even more of a P.O.S then what it already was) and yet somehow it just has never been replicated, yet alone broken.

However with the rather lenient renewal of SK39 and it's subsequent clear rates, could we possibly see this record of 11 clears be tied or even broken this tournament?

I honestly think that it is completely possible, in fact it honestly could've been broken last tournament, if it wasn't for the rain. This tournament has also been teasing some new, high potential competitors that could help in this cause, albeit if they can manage to clear the 2 stages, yet alone a spot on the list of 100.

[brz0ny]

The way I look at it, the course gets easier but also competitor lineups get worse. Its possible but if it didnt change on over 20 years I dont see it happening again unless they make a pathetically easy course which current course really isnt (as long as it has Warped Wall it will not be that).

[dakohosu]

To be honest it's a similar kind of thing to the Stage 1 age record in that we've just been pretty unlucky, in the sense that there were several tournaments that could've at least matched, if not beaten the record, if seemingly incredibly avoidable things hadn't happened. 12 and 14 would've had 11 clears each if Yamada and Hamm respectively hadn't been disqualified both for pretty dumb mistakes, while 36 could've easily had 12 or even 13 had the two DQs not been a thing and had Keitaro not almost tried to get himself timed out. I'm also pretty confident the record would've been beaten in 39 had it not been for the rain; Araki, Yusuke, Yuuji, and potentially Tomo, Darvish, and Takeru could've cleared Stage 1 otherwise, and I reckon more than 2 out of 6 of those competitors could've also beaten Stage 2 which would've taken us to more than the record 11 clears from Sasuke 4.

Whether the record will actually be broken in 40 I think is dependent on whether they make any changes to Stages 1 and 2, as well as weather conditions. If Stages 1 and 2 are exactly the same then I'd honestly predict 20-25 clears on Stage 1 and potentially even as high as 15 on Stage 2. However, typically after a success rate as high as we got on 39's Stage 2 one would expect at least some change, like how we got the Rolling Log in 37 after 10 clears/a 67% clear rate in 36, but given the almost reluctance to change anything about the first two stages in the last 3-4 years it's honestly really hard to tell. 9 clears out of 14 on a renewal to me at least is a sign that something definitely needs to be done, but we said the same about Stage 1 after 38 and they still did sweet shite all.

The best we can expect is a reduction in the time limit on Stage 2 given that we got a couple of 20+ second clears in 39. I'd say something like a 10-second reduction would potentially be sufficient to prevent the clear record from being matched or beaten, given that that would've timed out like half of the field in 39 (Keitaro, Mutou, Ryo, and Suzuki iirc).

On the topic of potentially exciting new blood for 40, this is obviously an important factor to consider when estimating potential numbers of clears (recently it's just been most of the same cohort + 1 or 2 new guys), but we obviously don't know what proportion of the 100 slots are being allocated to said new blood. They're obviously bigging it up for marketing purposes, but if it's like 5 or 10 competitors out of 100 (which let's be honest isn't unreasonable given Inui's obsession with frankly now unnecessarily high saturation of celebrities and comedians), and none of them have had experience with performing on stage under pressure, then I don't think they'll make much of an impact on the clear rates, especially given trial qualifiers' often shaky starts (look at Ryo, Hioki, Tomo etc's first few tournaments). I think that 37-year-old guy could be a dark horse given that he has an entire course replica in his warehouse and he's also abnormally strong, but everyone else I'd expect to fail Stage 1.