Increased difficulty for boulder setters

Bouldering comps are increasing in popularity and so is the level in between the participants. During the last years we have seen that during the qualification, more athletes have not done any boulders. In the last World Championship, 23 male did at most score one zone and also for the Youth World Championship, there are many that travel back home having done at most one zone. As the Olympic preparation have started, it is just natural that more relatively not so strong will try out bouldering. I would be surprised if we not will see a record number of; too many tops, too many ties and too many scoring zero during 2018. One solution that has been discussed within IFSC is adding one more zone hold which have been tried out successfully in USA and Japan. The Innsbruck WCH estimates around 150 male boulderers and it will be a very tough job for the route setters to separate them with just one zone.