22 August 2021
Male Olympic boulder setting complaints
Michael Piccolruaz, #15 in the Olympics, has posted critical comments on his Insta in regards the boulder setting in the Olympics. "Talking to the other competitors ALL (I've talked to most of us 20) agreed that this was not enjoyable and that it's sad that this is the way bouldering is being presented on the biggest stage in climbing history!"
In the qualification, Alex Megos was #6 by doing 1 Top and 4 Zones. In the final, five out of seven flashed the first, just one did the second and all flashed the zone of the third. In spite of that poor results for the athletes, Michael's critic does not mention the difficulty but only the style. "Walking on volumes, pressing, jumping, pressing again, some weird upsidedown bat hanging and to finish it off a lucky punch throw into a crack. And where is the climbing???"
Do you have any thoughts on how this could be changed and improved in the future?
Well the setters should simply consider setting more powerful and proper climbing boulders where you actually get to do a few moves... I know this kind of boulder is often difficult for them to set because many setters don't have the physical level to test and climb the hard physical boulders. So setting technical and coordinative boulders is obviously easier for them to judge the difficulty. One way to improve this situation would be to allow more young setters into the international setting team. There are so many motivated and strong young setters out there who would love to set for a world cup and also learn. From the experienced setters. But the IFSC and the current setters make it so incredibly hard for new setters to join the team...
Do you think this is also the common understanding among the competitors?Well I'm sure some fellow competitors think like this. And I don't want to say that we should just get powerful boulders. For instance, I thought the final at the Olympics was great in regards to the styles they set.
But the difficulty of the final boulders was very bad, one being way too easy and one way too hard (with a useless bonus).
In the qualification, Alex Megos was #6 by doing 1 Top and 4 Zones. In the final, five out of seven flashed the first, just one did the second and all flashed the zone of the third. In spite of that poor results for the athletes, Michael's critic does not mention the difficulty but only the style. "Walking on volumes, pressing, jumping, pressing again, some weird upsidedown bat hanging and to finish it off a lucky punch throw into a crack. And where is the climbing???"
Do you have any thoughts on how this could be changed and improved in the future?
Well the setters should simply consider setting more powerful and proper climbing boulders where you actually get to do a few moves... I know this kind of boulder is often difficult for them to set because many setters don't have the physical level to test and climb the hard physical boulders. So setting technical and coordinative boulders is obviously easier for them to judge the difficulty. One way to improve this situation would be to allow more young setters into the international setting team. There are so many motivated and strong young setters out there who would love to set for a world cup and also learn. From the experienced setters. But the IFSC and the current setters make it so incredibly hard for new setters to join the team...
Do you think this is also the common understanding among the competitors?Well I'm sure some fellow competitors think like this. And I don't want to say that we should just get powerful boulders. For instance, I thought the final at the Olympics was great in regards to the styles they set.
But the difficulty of the final boulders was very bad, one being way too easy and one way too hard (with a useless bonus).
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