Marco Scolaris thoughts on 2 zones, route setting and eating disorder

Marco Scolaris has been the President of IFSC since it was founded in 2007. He has been very active in making Climbing getting into the Olympics. Here is part of a chat we had two weeks ago. The questions I put forward related mainly to two zones in Bouldering, route setting failures and Eating disorder.

”We have not yet reached consensus when it comes to two zones and points. IFSC will not be a top government organisation as long as I am running it. I think that in the end, we will score by points in bouldering and our working group are discussing the two zones possibilities. Topping out is what counts in bouldering and there are different calculation possibilities with two zones.

There will always be comps where the setters were not spot on, due to humidity, coincidences but also due to mistakes. Possibly, you can have some pre-runners testing the boulders.

The IFSC is constantly monitoring Athletes' Health, through its Medical Commission. In this perspective, we regularly proceed with BMI testing of the athletes during our events. We have worked hard with the eating disorder issue and we had fewer cases for several years. For some reason, it picked up again and we are discussing new ways to deal with it but there are also legal problems. Since BMI low values might be an indicator of eating disorders, we are improving our system of monitoring, studying actions to be taken, including, for sure, preparing educational programs. The health of the athletes is something which is very important for us. For sure we will start an educational program as I read on 8a that Stasa Gejo suggests. We all probably know or have seen climbers having had problems with eating disorder. Today, our sport is getting exposure through lifestreaming and television, therefore we have even more responsibility to lead the sports community by example. Eating disorders are a serious issue in our society, affecting more commonly adolescents and young adults, but not only. We have to do our part to protect the climbers' health.

I cannot talk of eating disorders as I am not a doctor and that is diagnosis. What I can say is the above regarding BMI measurement."