22 February 2018

"The Height of Injustice"

Chris Ring has done some analysis based on the 8a.nu database to see if height and age have any impact on the reached peak climbing grade in routes and bouldering for U.S. climbers. R & I has found Ring's analysis interesting and published a long article. Looking at the diagram we can see that for 80 percent of U.S. route climbers, their peak performance varied within the 5.12b/c range, for boulderers it was V8 level. Taking into account the overall curve, in bouldering, the very shortest and tallest climbers generally reach a lower grade. Among the route climbers, a short body height might be an advantage, as shorter climbers reached higher grades on average. However, the differences can be considered rather small – all average peak grades range among the 5.12 and V7/8 level. Ring concludes that to him, "our subjective climbing grading scale is pretty good. […] It would be unfortunate if a super long reach was a prerequisite for climbing most 5.12s. And it turns out that it isn’t." As a side note, from the very best on rock it is interesting to see that when it comes to grades, a 155 cm female and a 185 cm male (Eiter and Ondra) have achieved the highest grade. In bouldering and in competitions, it is the same, it is impossible to say what is best as many of the top climbers are just around 160 cm or above 180 cm.
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